Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider

The intellectual dialogue and friendship between two key modernist artists – the painter Wassily Kandinsky and the composer Arnold Schoenberg – forms the focal point of this fascinating survey, charting the early 20th-century parallel (and related) movements towards abstraction in art and atonality in music. This elegant and colourful book features major works by Kandinsky and his compatriots in the German expressionist Blue Rider group, including August Macke, Gabriele Munter and Alexej von Jawlensky, David Burliuk, Albert Bloch and others, as well as a significant number of rarely seen paintings by Schonenberg himself. Additional documents including letters, photographs, and musical programmes, as well as the music of the Second Viennese School, bring another dimension to the book, combining vividly to portray a moment of dramatic artistic and musical synergy. Published to accompany the exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York from 24 October 2004 to 12 February 2004, the book also includes a specially produced CD of Schoenberg’s influential concert in Munich on 2 January 1911 – a concert that inspired this fruitful friendship and brought new dimensions to German expressionism.