One of the most profound revolutions in modern art occurred when painting completely abandoned the imitation of the natural world (mimesis) to focus entirely on its own formal elements: pure color, line, shape, and composition. The leader of this radical departure was the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. His work 'Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor),' dated between 1910 and 1913, is historically recognized as the first purely abstract artwork, containing no reference to visible reality.

Kandinsky believed that painting should aspire to the condition of music. Just as a musical composition evokes deep emotions without imitating sounds of the physical world, he argued that visual art could create a spiritual and emotional impact without representing objects. The watercolor consists of a dynamic arrangement of floating color washes, chaotic scribbled lines, and biomorphic shapes scattered across the paper. There are no recognizable figures, landscapes, or horizons. The viewer is invited to cease looking for objects and instead experience the rhythm of the lines and the emotional resonance of the colors.

Kandinsky codified this philosophy in his ground-breaking 1911 treatise 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art' (Über das Geistige in der Kunst). He proposed that colors possessed specific psychological and spiritual associations — blue represented depth and tranquility, while yellow was warm, sharp, and aggressive. Alongside the 'Blue Rider' (Der Blaue Reiter) movement he co-founded in Munich, Kandinsky sought to liberate art from materialism. His bold step toward pure abstraction laid the aesthetic foundation for subsequent movements throughout the 20th century, from the geometric abstraction of Malevich to the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock.