Lied (Song)

(Volga Song)
In Lied, boatmen dressed in Russian costumes embark on legendary drakkars decorated with Russian Orthodox icons. The group of moving figures provides the pretext for a profusion of colored lines and marks with a tonality reminiscent of a fairytale, and featuring a distant background which evokes an eastern city built around a mosque.

Kandinsky returned to the technique of tempera to glorify the folklore of old Russia, which allowed him to get away from realist motifs and accentuate the independence of color. In these chromatic ensembles, the colors are pure and applied in the style of a mosaic.
Lied is a major example of Kandinsky's early work marked by symbolism, Russian folk art, and Jugendstil.