Vasily Kandinsky, along with Franz Marc, Gabriele Munter, and Alexei Jawlensky, were members of the Blue Rider, a loose alliance of artists based in Munich. Although these artists did not have a common style, they did share a belief in the symbolic and spiritual importance of forms and colors and their effect on emotions and memories. The Blue Rider also promoted a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting and looked to non-Western, European medieval, and folk art traditions for inspiration. This picture features the troika, a horse-drawn sled from Kandinsky's native Russia.