The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist renowned for his pioneering abstract compositions, bold use of colour, and exploration of spiritual and emotional expression through non-representational forms. He believed that the most advanced art could evoke “emotions that we cannot put into words,” seeing abstraction as a way to convey feeling directly, beyond language.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection has been built object by object over a century and a half. It's a mark on what human creativity has produced that deserves to last. These images are drawn from that collection: images that have passed through the Met's curatorial eye and entered its permanent care, each one considered significant enough to keep.