Is Kandinsky’s Art Public Domain? Check the Work and File

Short answer: Some exact Kandinsky works and image files have a clear public-domain basis; his entire output should not receive one blanket “yes.” The Art Institute of Chicago identifies a 1919 U.S. publication supporting the U.S. public-domain status of Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons). The two different works illustrated here have files supplied under CC0 by Lenbachhaus. Their independent U.S. publication histories are not established by this guide.

Kandinsky lived from 1866 to 1944. His ordinary EU and UK life-plus-70 author term has elapsed, but that is not a worldwide clearance. Start with the particular painting, print or book you have found, then check the country and the reproduction you intend to use.

Start with a particular work

The Art Institute’s library account offers a useful concrete example. It identifies a U.S. publication of Cannons in 1919 and expressly connects that publication with the work’s U.S. public-domain status. This is an attributed institutional finding; we have not independently inspected that historical plate.

The painting’s collection record dates the canvas to 1913. Those two years do different jobs: one dates the making of the painting, the other provides publication evidence. Neither is the museum’s accession number, 1931.511. A number beginning with 1931 is not proof that the painting was first published then.

Kandinsky’s titles can also be misleadingly similar. An Improvisation, a numbered Composition and a plate from Small Worlds are not interchangeable names for any colourful abstract picture. Keep the full title, date and collection number together before making a claim or ordering a reproduction.

A colour study, not a perfect grid

The opening image is the work often called Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles. Lenbachhaus records it under the German title Farbstudie – Quadrate mit konzentrischen Ringen: 1913, watercolour, gouache and crayon, just 23.9 by 31.5 centimetres.

It is not a huge oil painting or a computer-generated colour chart. The rings wobble, edges bleed, and some colours nearly cover the ones underneath. Twelve roughly square spaces let you compare similar shapes with different neighbours. A pale centre surrounded by red behaves differently from a dark centre surrounded by yellow.

Try looking at one square, then the square immediately beside it. The activity is simple: what appears to advance, recede, brighten or become heavy? You do not need to assign a fixed symbolic meaning to every colour to notice the differences.

The complete sheet matters. A close crop of one circle may be attractive, but it removes the comparison that the rows make possible. A digital redraw with perfectly circular rings would change the visible work, even if it kept approximately the same palette. The image here preserves the museum file’s irregular boundaries and paper edge.

A boat inside an improvisation

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 26 (Rowing), 1912. Lenbachhaus, Munich, Gabriele Münter Stiftung 1957, GMS 66. Exact object and CC0 file.

In Improvisation 26 (Rowing), Lenbachhaus identifies a boat with extended oars and figures bent forward. The subtitle gives you a foothold without turning every patch of colour into a labelled object.

Follow the long black strokes rising from the lower left. Then look at the curved outline above the broad yellow area. The marks suggest movement across the surface, rather than the measured depth of a harbour view. Blue does not stay neatly inside a strip of water; colour and outline often move independently.

This is an oil painting measuring 97 by 107.5 centimetres. A website can display it at the same width as the small colour study, hiding a substantial difference in physical size and surface. They are useful companions because they show two different ways of organising colour: repeated compartments in the study, and intersecting gestures in the painting.

Twelve records to start from

These are twelve identified research objects, not twelve approved image downloads. Only the two Lenbachhaus files are reproduced here. The Art Institute’s public-domain flags are reported as provider metadata; a missing flag is not itself a legal ruling that a painting remains protected.

Work and institutional record	Recorded date	What the record helps distinguish
Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons)	1913	Separate institutional evidence of 1919 U.S. publication.
Landscape with Two Poplars	1912	A named landscape, not a generic abstract composition.
Painting with Green Center	1913	A separate Chicago canvas with its own record.
Painting with Troika	January 18, 1911	Keep the museum’s unusually precise date.
Houses at Murnau	1909	Earlier architectural subject; image not acquired here.
Klänge	1907–12; published 1913	A book: production and publication dates differ.
Small Worlds V	1922	Plate five; no public-domain image flag in checked metadata.
Small Worlds IV	1922	Plate four, not a second title for plate five.
The Green Line	1938	Later work; U.S. branch unresolved here.
Gray Spots	July 1934	Later work; file permission not established here.
Squares with Concentric Circles	1913	Illustrated Lenbachhaus CC0 file, GMS 446.
Improvisation 26 (Rowing)	1912	Illustrated Lenbachhaus CC0 file, GMS 66.

What changes between countries

The ordinary EU term runs for the author’s life plus seventy years. For a painter who died in 1944, that ordinary calculation ended with 2014. It does not remove national exceptions, moral rights or rights arising from the first lawful publication of previously unpublished material.

The UK’s ordinary artistic-work rule also uses life plus seventy years. Do not extend that simple answer indiscriminately to every item in an archive: the UK duration notice identifies special rules for some old unpublished material, including engravings. Its 2039 rule is not a general extension for all old paintings.

In the United States, Circular 15A states that works published there before January 1, 1931 are public domain. That is the 2026 cutoff for publication, not a licence for everything painted by 1930. Foreign publication and formerly unpublished works can require further analysis. Apart from the attributed Cannons finding, this guide does not independently establish U.S. publication histories for the listed works.

Books, prints and the file you download

A historical Klänge page, a recent translation and a newly designed edition are different things. Identify the edition and the page or plate; do not copy a publisher’s modern introduction because Kandinsky’s own author term has ended. Likewise, a modern exhibition photograph may include more than a faithful view of the painting.

For the two illustrated files, Lenbachhaus explicitly supplies CC0 terms. Keep its object link, accession and file record with your download. That makes the provider’s permission traceable without pretending it settles every legal question in every country.

Finally, check the image itself. Preserve the complete composition for identification, label any detail crop, and avoid stretching circles into ovals. A clear source answers where the image came from; careful presentation lets a reader see what Kandinsky actually made.