With its vigorous brushwork and intense coloring, this pencil case bears the unmistakable stamp of Wassily Kandinsky, one of the foremost masters of abstract art. The work that adorns the case – Autumn Landscape with Boats (detail; 1908) – marks a turning point in Kandinsky’s career, when he turned from landscape painting towards the abstract style that came to characterize his art.  

The painting was displayed at the Israel Museum in the exhibition Color Gone Wild: Fauve and Expressionist Masterworks from the Merzbacher Collection