Swann Auction Galleries’ January 29 sale of illustrated books and graphics in New York will feature a rare woodcut-illustrated book by Wassily Kandinsky titled Klänge (Sounds).
Described by the artist as a musical album, the prose poems, typography and illustrations merge and complement each other. The book dates from 1913, thus predating Kandinsky’s move to abstraction.
Many of the woodcuts, in Expressionist style, feature his recurrent motif of the horse and rider, as shown below.