Wassily Kandinsky(1866 — 1944)
Wassily Kandinsky
France, Allemagne, république socialiste fédérative soviétique de Russie, Union soviétique, Empire russe
7 min read
Russian painter and art theorist, naturalized German and later French, regarded as one of the pioneers of abstract art. He gave up a career in law for painting and produced around 1910 one of the first abstract watercolors in the history of Western art.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Color is the keyboard, the eye is the hammer, the soul is the piano with many strings. »
« In abstract art especially, the work is born of an inner necessity. »
Key Facts
- Born in 1866 in Moscow, he gave up a career as a lawyer to devote himself to painting from 1896 in Munich.
- In 1911 he co-founded the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) with Franz Marc.
- In 1911 he published his major theoretical essay 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art'.
- He taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933, until its closure by the Nazis.
- Naturalized French, he died in 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Works & Achievements
A figurative canvas in which a rider gallops across a landscape; the motif and the title foreshadow the future avant-garde group.
Regarded as one of the first entirely abstract works in Western art, with no recognizable subject whatsoever.
A foundational theoretical essay in which Kandinsky argues for an art freed from imitation, acting directly upon the soul.
A vast canvas regarded as the pinnacle of his Munich period, a whirlwind of colours and forms evoking chaos and rebirth.
An emblematic work of the Bauhaus period, a rigorous balance between geometric forms and primary colours.
His second major theoretical treatise, analysing the basic elements of the visual language: the point, the line, and the plane.
A composition in which coloured circles float against a dark background, illustrating his fascination with this shape “full of possibilities”.
A canvas from his Paris period with colourful biomorphic forms, lighter and more dreamlike, populating a blue background.
Anecdotes
According to his own legend, Kandinsky discovered abstract art by chance: coming home one evening to his studio, he caught sight of a painting “of indescribable beauty” that he did not recognize. It was one of his own canvases lying on its side: no longer seeing the subject, he saw only colors and shapes. He understood then that the object was not necessary to painting.
As a teenager, Kandinsky was overwhelmed by color: he recounts that as a child, while mixing his paints, he could hear the colors “hiss” as they met. Today it is thought that he was a synesthete, meaning he spontaneously associated sounds with colors, which fed his entire theory of painting.
In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky was a jurist destined for a brilliant academic career. Yet he turned down a chair as a professor of law to go and study painting in Munich. Two shocks had decided his calling: an exhibition of Monet's *Haystacks* and a performance of Wagner's opera *Lohengrin*.
In 1911, with his friend Franz Marc, Kandinsky founded the group known as the “Blue Rider” (Der Blaue Reiter). The name came from their shared love of the color blue, horses, and riders; Kandinsky laughingly said they had come up with it “around a café table.”
In 1933, the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, the school where Kandinsky taught, deeming his art “degenerate.” Several of his works were confiscated and shown in 1937 in the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibition. Kandinsky then went into exile in France, near Paris, where he spent his final years.
Primary Sources
Color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings.
Only colors had the power to move me to my very depths. The sun dissolves the whole of Moscow into a single spot that, like a wild tuba, sets the inner soul vibrating.
The point is the result of the first encounter of the tool with the material surface, the originating plane. It is the most concise of forms.
A great spiritual movement, of which painting is one of the most powerful agents, is under way. We wish to show, through the diversity of forms, that the inner being of man vibrates everywhere.
Key Places
Kandinsky's birthplace, whose light and colors left a lasting mark on his pictorial imagination.
The city where he studied and became a painter, and where he founded the group Der Blaue Reiter in 1911.
A small Alpine town where, around 1908-1910, Kandinsky painted landscapes with increasingly free colors, on his way toward abstraction.
Art and design school where Kandinsky taught painting and the theory of form from 1922 until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933.
A Paris suburb where Kandinsky spent his final years in exile and where he died in 1944.