Small Worlds VII (Kleine Welten VII) from Small Worlds (Kleine Welten)

Small Worlds VII (Kleine Welten VII) from Small Worlds (Kleine Welten) is a foundational abstract work created by Vasily Kandinsky in 1922. Classified specifically as a print, the work is a lithograph, deriving its stark geometric structure from a design initially conceived as a woodcut. This piece forms part of Kandinsky's celebrated portfolio Small Worlds, a collection of twelve distinct prints that comprehensively documented the artist's shifting engagement with printmaking media, including four drypoints, two pure woodcuts, and six lithographs.

Created during Kandinsky’s influential tenure at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, this work signals the artist's move away from the fluid, spiritual abstraction of his earlier Expressionist phase toward a more rational, structured vocabulary of form. Although Kandinsky was Russian, the print is culturally categorized as French, reflecting the location of its publication and the significant role of the Parisian print market in disseminating modern abstract ideas throughout Europe in the early 1920s.

The composition of Small Worlds VII exemplifies Kandinsky’s architectural sensibility. It combines precise diagonal and curved forms with bold, heavy lines, suggesting dynamic motion contained within a carefully balanced field. Through the medium of the lithograph, Kandinsky was able to explore the potential for stark contrast, utilizing black and white to emphasize geometric relationships. These complex visual inquiries into non-representational composition made the Small Worlds portfolio a cornerstone of twentieth-century printmaking. This important series of prints is preserved in the prestigious collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where it remains a key reference point for understanding the history of abstract art produced in 1922.