Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons)

1913

Oil on canvas, 111 × 111.3 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

A square canvas of swirling color in which a few objects can still be picked out. Its subtitle names the clearest of them.

First shown in London in July 1913, at the Allied Artists' Association salon in the Royal Albert Hall.
Look at the lower right for the cannons, then up at the leaning red and white buildings.
He told the collector Arthur Jerome Eddy the cannons probably reflected that year's war talk; the real content was what the forms and colors make us feel (Art Institute summary).
He called his improvisations of 1910–14 unconscious, spontaneous expressions; the guns show how much of the visible world could still slip in.
Eddy probably bought it from the artist; his family gave it to Chicago in 1931.