Verses Without Words (Stichi bez slov)

Verses Without Words (Stichi bez slov) is a pivotal early work by Vasily Kandinsky, created in 1903. This comprehensive collection is classified as a print portfolio, featuring twelve distinct woodcuts. The portfolio’s material structure is expansive, including additional graphic elements such as a woodcut title page, a table of contents, a supplementary woodcut, and a woodcut colophon, making the total suite sixteen highly finished prints.

Executed in 1903, the creation of this piece marks an important transitional stage in Kandinsky’s progression toward non-objective art. While the artist’s output at this time still reflects strong Symbolist and Art Nouveau influences, this series showcases his early mastery of graphic arts. The medium of the woodcut naturally compels the simplification of form, allowing Kandinsky to experiment profoundly with dynamic black-and-white contrasts and powerful, expressive lines, laying the conceptual groundwork for his future theoretical explorations of color and pure abstraction.

Though Kandinsky spent this formative period primarily in Munich, the portfolio is classified by the Museum of Modern Art as having a French cultural origin, reflecting the wide circulation and international artistic dialogue surrounding the emerging print culture of the era. The title itself, Verses Without Words, suggests the artist’s desire to convey poetic or musical rhythm through purely visual means, an objective that would become central to Kandinsky’s mature abstract language.

The entire suite demonstrates the artist’s early commitment to serial imagery and narrative sequence outside of traditional representational painting. As an early twentieth-century work of prints, the portfolio holds significant art-historical value. This rare and comprehensive example of Kandinsky's graphic work is preserved in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where it serves as a crucial reference point for understanding the emergence of modern art. Depending on the edition and specific publication rights, similar historical prints may occasionally be found in digitized public domain art collections, making the study of the artist's early vision accessible to researchers worldwide.