Artists & Artisans
Kandinsky, Wassily
Credited as a leader of the avant-garde movement and a founding father of pure abstraction, artist and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky helped usher in a new age of art at the turn of the 20th century. Though he began his career as an artist later in life than most of his colleagues, Kandinsky harnessed a novel approach that likened the role of an artist to a prophet who brings the future to the masses. His legacy endures through his profound impact on modern art, including helping to found the Bauhaus school, which nurtured future generations of artists.
Early Life
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia, on December 4, 1866. Kandinsky, the son of a tea merchant, moved early in his life to Odesa (in modern-day Ukraine) to live with an aunt due to his father’s constant travels. As a boy, he took drawing lessons and first realized the power of color, reflecting that “each color lives by its mysterious life.”
Although he was enchanted early on by drawing and graduated from Odesa Art School, he followed his family’s wishes and attended law school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, where he studied law and economics. Kandinsky, always very bright, excelled in university and, upon graduation, became a professor at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia). His studies also earned him a fieldwork scholarship to the Vologda Oblast north of Moscow, where he was exposed to traditional Russian folk art and spirituality. Kandinsky reflected on his moving experience in Vologda in many of his earliest works.
Turning Towards Art
In 1895, Kandinsky experienced a major event that shifted his career aspirations toward art. Kandinsky went to an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow, where he was floored by Claude Monet’s Haystacks. This first experience of non-objective art and the powerful quality of Monet’s colors implanted into Kandinsky’s mind. Later, he would write of the experience: “I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.”
At age 30, Kandinsky quit his job and moved to Munich, Germany, to devote himself fully to the study of art. First, Kandinsky studied at Anton Azbe’s private school before being accepted to the Munich Academy of Arts. In the beginning, Kandinsky painted conventional forms and scenes, using more representational academic styles. This gave him a solid base for understanding the foundation of painting. However, in his free time, Kandinsky was exploring new theories derived from spiritual studies, his fascination with color, and his experiences listening to ground-breaking musical operas, such as Wagner’s Lohengrin.
| The Blue Rider by Kandinsky. 1903. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. |
In 1900, two years after entering the Academy, Kandinsky graduated with a diploma. For the next few years, Kandinsky found moderate success as a professional artist, melding Impressionistic brushstrokes and ephemeral qualities with 19th-century realism and the vibrancy of Fauvism’s color palette.
Kandinsky painted many landscapes and urban scenes in the early years, partially influenced by his early travels to Vologda province. Though he painted more traditional landscapes, his early works were already devoid of human forms. A notable exception is The Blue Rider (1903), which features a small, cloaked figure racing through the canvas on horseback amidst a rural meadow scene. The rider grabs the eye of the viewer, but he is not clearly defined due to Kandinsky’s feathery brushwork. This intentional disjunction would become a feature technique of Kandinsky’s later abstract works.
Moving Towards Abstraction: Der Blaue Reiter
Between 1906 and 1908, Kandinsky traveled across Europe with his fellow artist and mistress Gabrielle Münter before the two settled in Murnau, a small Bavarian town. By this point, Kandinsky’s many artistic influences coalesced into a highly personal style. This style would become a breakthrough for purely abstract art.
| Rapallo-Stürmischer Tag by Kandinsky. 1906. Oil on canvas. M.S. Rau (sold) |
Kandinsky completely eliminated traditional subject matter and turned instead toward painting as a means of creating a visual “language.” Inspired by the moving emotional capabilities of music, Kandinsky worked to imbue each color, line and shape with an idea or feeling that the viewer could tap into. His 1908-09 work Blue Mountain clearly exemplifies this key transitional period. A blue mountain is flanked by two trees, each painted a primary color, on a flattened plane. While there are riders in the foreground, each figure is a single color, and the composition forgoes any realistic details.
|
Blue Mountain by Kandinsky. 1908-09. Oil on canvas. Guggenheim Museum, New York. |
In 1911, Kandinsky and fellow artist Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter, an avant-garde artistic group committed to the belief that art should express spiritual and emotional truths rather than just the physical world. Using the symbolic power of color and abstract forms, which Kandinsky detailed in his influential book On the Spiritual in Art (1910), the artists affirmed that non-representational art can greatly impact the viewer experience.
Despite the group’s brief existence, ending with the onset of World War I in 1914, Der Blaue Reiter significantly influenced modern art by promoting innovative approaches and breaking traditional aesthetic boundaries. Their exhibitions and two almanacs were pivotal in advancing the ideals of the early 20th-century avant-garde.
Returning to Russia
As World War I loomed over Europe, Kandinsky ended his relationship with Gabriele Münter and returned to Moscow. He continued to produce abstract paintings and write art theory with the support of an interested Russian audience. His style changed during this period toward basic geometric forms and hard lines. While his Munich and Bavarian works still had occasional associations with landscapes, his Moscow canvases and watercolors were fully devoted to abstraction.
| Red Square in Moscow by Kandinsky. 1916. Oil on Canvas. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. |
When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 and the Soviet government took over, Kandinsky applied his seemingly endless energies toward building government-run arts education programs. The early Soviet government was keen to win the favor and services of avant-garde artists, so he became a professor at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts in 1918. A year later, Kandinsky helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow with 22 museums across the Soviet Union. In 1920, the state organized a one-man exhibition of his work to honor his governmental and professorial work. With his own personal practice, governmental work and a happy family at home, Kandinsky imagined himself settled for the rest of his life in Moscow.
Unfortunately for Kandinsky, this would not be the case. At the end of 1920, his young son passed. By 1921, the state was moving towards Social Realism and rejected his spiritual, expressionistic view of art. By the end of the year, the Kandinskys relocated to Berlin to teach at the newly founded Bauhaus school.
Bauhaus and Berlin
The Staatliches Bauhaus was an art school founded in 1919 that combined fine art and craft under one roof. Kandinsky began teaching in 1922. That same year, Kandinsky signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists" at the International Congress of Progressive Artists.
After three years, Kandinsky finally gained the opportunity to teach an abstract painting course, where he augmented his color theories with the new elements of psychology spearheaded by other professors at the school. Kandinsky found this work incredibly rewarding due to the research and scholarship-oriented environment that prized forward thinking. In 1926, Kandinsky released his second theoretical publication, Point and Line to Plane.
| Yellow-Red-Blue by Kandinsky. 1925. Oil on canvas. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. |
During this period, Kandinsky’s work fully embraced geometric abstraction. He produced iconic works, such as Yellow-Red-Blue (1925), which utilized bold colors and basic shapes to convey complex emotional themes. Kandinsky believed these geometric forms could express universal human emotions and spiritual values, transcending the representational to reveal the underlying structure and foundational harmony of the cosmos.
His Final Years in France
The Kandinskys immigrated to Paris in 1933 upon the closure of the Bauhaus School by the Nazis. Kandinsky’s works were considered “degenerate art” by the Nazis due to their abstract nature. In 1937, Kandinsky participated in a widely attended degenerate art exhibition in Munich, though 57 of his works were confiscated for their controversiality.
Kandinsky’s works during this last period are often considered a synthesis of his more organic manner of his early years with the geometric abstraction of his Bauhaus period. Kandinsky began calling his works “concrete" rather than "abstract," and his canvases depicted biomorphic forms with brightly colored outlines that seemed to illustrate the artist’s inner life. He refined his visual language, and works such as Composition X (1939), read almost like indecipherable hieroglyphics.
| Composition X by Kandinsky. 1939. Oil on canvas. Kunststammlung Nordrhein, Westfalen, Düsseldorf. |
In his last years, Kandinsky’s works seemed to grapple with the almost impossible task of reckoning with and exemplifying the human soul. At a time when innumerable suffering and horrors gripped Europe, Kandinsky attempted to resonate with the observer’s innately human and emotional core.
A Lasting Legacy
Upon his death, Kandinsky’s widow established the Prix Kandinsky in 1946 with the help of critics Charles Estienne and Léon Degand to maintain the legacy of his profound career. Wassily Kandinsky’s innovative approach to avant-garde art cemented him as an indisputable founding father of 20th-century abstract art and an important fore-bearer of contemporary art. His pioneering exploration of color, form, and art theory reshaped artistic boundaries and inspired generations of artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Hans Hartung, among others. Kandinsky's theoretical writings continue to be foundational texts in art education, underscoring the emotional and symbolic potential of abstract art.
| Murnau mit Kirche II by Kandinsky. 1910. Oil on canvas. Sold at Sotheby’s for $44.55 million in March 2023. |
His works are prominently displayed in major museums worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Reflecting his lasting impact and the high regard in which his art is held, Kandinsky's paintings have achieved stunning auction records, with pieces like Murnau mit Kirche II (1910) selling for almost $45 million. His innovative spirit and commitment to advancing art for both himself and future artists are the cornerstones of his enduring legacy.
Artists & Artisans
Kandinsky, Wassily
Credited as a leader of the avant-garde movement and a founding father of pure abstraction, artist and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky helped usher in a new age of art at the turn of the 20th century. Though he began his career as an artist later in life than most of his colleagues, Kandinsky harnessed a novel approach that likened the role of an artist to a prophet who brings the future to the masses. His legacy endures through his profound impact on modern art, including helping to found the Bauhaus school, which nurtured future generations of artists.
Early Life
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia, on December 4, 1866. Kandinsky, the son of a tea merchant, moved early in his life to Odesa (in modern-day Ukraine) to live with an aunt due to his father’s constant travels. As a boy, he took drawing lessons and first realized the power of color, reflecting that “each color lives by its mysterious life.”
Although he was enchanted early on by drawing and graduated from Odesa Art School, he followed his family’s wishes and attended law school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, where he studied law and economics. Kandinsky, always very bright, excelled in university and, upon graduation, became a professor at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia). His studies also earned him a fieldwork scholarship to the Vologda Oblast north of Moscow, where he was exposed to traditional Russian folk art and spirituality. Kandinsky reflected on his moving experience in Vologda in many of his earliest works.
Turning Towards Art
In 1895, Kandinsky experienced a major event that shifted his career aspirations toward art. Kandinsky went to an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow, where he was floored by Claude Monet’s Haystacks. This first experience of non-objective art and the powerful quality of Monet’s colors implanted into Kandinsky’s mind. Later, he would write of the experience: “I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.”
At age 30, Kandinsky quit his job and moved to Munich, Germany, to devote himself fully to the study of art. First, Kandinsky studied at Anton Azbe’s private school before being accepted to the Munich Academy of Arts. In the beginning, Kandinsky painted conventional forms and scenes, using more representational academic styles. This gave him a solid base for understanding the foundation of painting. However, in his free time, Kandinsky was exploring new theories derived from spiritual studies, his fascination with color, and his experiences listening to ground-breaking musical operas, such as Wagner’s Lohengrin.
| The Blue Rider by Kandinsky. 1903. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. |
In 1900, two years after entering the Academy, Kandinsky graduated with a diploma. For the next few years, Kandinsky found moderate success as a professional artist, melding Impressionistic brushstrokes and ephemeral qualities with 19th-century realism and the vibrancy of Fauvism’s color palette.
Kandinsky painted many landscapes and urban scenes in the early years, partially influenced by his early travels to Vologda province. Though he painted more traditional landscapes, his early works were already devoid of human forms. A notable exception is The Blue Rider (1903), which features a small, cloaked figure racing through the canvas on horseback amidst a rural meadow scene. The rider grabs the eye of the viewer, but he is not clearly defined due to Kandinsky’s feathery brushwork. This intentional disjunction would become a feature technique of Kandinsky’s later abstract works.
Moving Towards Abstraction: Der Blaue Reiter
Between 1906 and 1908, Kandinsky traveled across Europe with his fellow artist and mistress Gabrielle Münter before the two settled in Murnau, a small Bavarian town. By this point, Kandinsky’s many artistic influences coalesced into a highly personal style. This style would become a breakthrough for purely abstract art.
| Rapallo-Stürmischer Tag by Kandinsky. 1906. Oil on canvas. M.S. Rau (sold) |
Kandinsky completely eliminated traditional subject matter and turned instead toward painting as a means of creating a visual “language.” Inspired by the moving emotional capabilities of music, Kandinsky worked to imbue each color, line and shape with an idea or feeling that the viewer could tap into. His 1908-09 work Blue Mountain clearly exemplifies this key transitional period. A blue mountain is flanked by two trees, each painted a primary color, on a flattened plane. While there are riders in the foreground, each figure is a single color, and the composition forgoes any realistic details.
|
Blue Mountain by Kandinsky. 1908-09. Oil on canvas. Guggenheim Museum, New York. |
In 1911, Kandinsky and fellow artist Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter, an avant-garde artistic group committed to the belief that art should express spiritual and emotional truths rather than just the physical world. Using the symbolic power of color and abstract forms, which Kandinsky detailed in his influential book On the Spiritual in Art (1910), the artists affirmed that non-representational art can greatly impact the viewer experience.
Despite the group’s brief existence, ending with the onset of World War I in 1914, Der Blaue Reiter significantly influenced modern art by promoting innovative approaches and breaking traditional aesthetic boundaries. Their exhibitions and two almanacs were pivotal in advancing the ideals of the early 20th-century avant-garde.
Returning to Russia
As World War I loomed over Europe, Kandinsky ended his relationship with Gabriele Münter and returned to Moscow. He continued to produce abstract paintings and write art theory with the support of an interested Russian audience. His style changed during this period toward basic geometric forms and hard lines. While his Munich and Bavarian works still had occasional associations with landscapes, his Moscow canvases and watercolors were fully devoted to abstraction.
| Red Square in Moscow by Kandinsky. 1916. Oil on Canvas. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. |
When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 and the Soviet government took over, Kandinsky applied his seemingly endless energies toward building government-run arts education programs. The early Soviet government was keen to win the favor and services of avant-garde artists, so he became a professor at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts in 1918. A year later, Kandinsky helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow with 22 museums across the Soviet Union. In 1920, the state organized a one-man exhibition of his work to honor his governmental and professorial work. With his own personal practice, governmental work and a happy family at home, Kandinsky imagined himself settled for the rest of his life in Moscow.
Unfortunately for Kandinsky, this would not be the case. At the end of 1920, his young son passed. By 1921, the state was moving towards Social Realism and rejected his spiritual, expressionistic view of art. By the end of the year, the Kandinskys relocated to Berlin to teach at the newly founded Bauhaus school.
Bauhaus and Berlin
The Staatliches Bauhaus was an art school founded in 1919 that combined fine art and craft under one roof. Kandinsky began teaching in 1922. That same year, Kandinsky signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists" at the International Congress of Progressive Artists.
After three years, Kandinsky finally gained the opportunity to teach an abstract painting course, where he augmented his color theories with the new elements of psychology spearheaded by other professors at the school. Kandinsky found this work incredibly rewarding due to the research and scholarship-oriented environment that prized forward thinking. In 1926, Kandinsky released his second theoretical publication, Point and Line to Plane.
| Yellow-Red-Blue by Kandinsky. 1925. Oil on canvas. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. |
During this period, Kandinsky’s work fully embraced geometric abstraction. He produced iconic works, such as Yellow-Red-Blue (1925), which utilized bold colors and basic shapes to convey complex emotional themes. Kandinsky believed these geometric forms could express universal human emotions and spiritual values, transcending the representational to reveal the underlying structure and foundational harmony of the cosmos.
His Final Years in France
The Kandinskys immigrated to Paris in 1933 upon the closure of the Bauhaus School by the Nazis. Kandinsky’s works were considered “degenerate art” by the Nazis due to their abstract nature. In 1937, Kandinsky participated in a widely attended degenerate art exhibition in Munich, though 57 of his works were confiscated for their controversiality.
Kandinsky’s works during this last period are often considered a synthesis of his more organic manner of his early years with the geometric abstraction of his Bauhaus period. Kandinsky began calling his works “concrete" rather than "abstract," and his canvases depicted biomorphic forms with brightly colored outlines that seemed to illustrate the artist’s inner life. He refined his visual language, and works such as Composition X (1939), read almost like indecipherable hieroglyphics.
| Composition X by Kandinsky. 1939. Oil on canvas. Kunststammlung Nordrhein, Westfalen, Düsseldorf. |
In his last years, Kandinsky’s works seemed to grapple with the almost impossible task of reckoning with and exemplifying the human soul. At a time when innumerable suffering and horrors gripped Europe, Kandinsky attempted to resonate with the observer’s innately human and emotional core.
A Lasting Legacy
Upon his death, Kandinsky’s widow established the Prix Kandinsky in 1946 with the help of critics Charles Estienne and Léon Degand to maintain the legacy of his profound career. Wassily Kandinsky’s innovative approach to avant-garde art cemented him as an indisputable founding father of 20th-century abstract art and an important fore-bearer of contemporary art. His pioneering exploration of color, form, and art theory reshaped artistic boundaries and inspired generations of artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Hans Hartung, among others. Kandinsky's theoretical writings continue to be foundational texts in art education, underscoring the emotional and symbolic potential of abstract art.
| Murnau mit Kirche II by Kandinsky. 1910. Oil on canvas. Sold at Sotheby’s for $44.55 million in March 2023. |
His works are prominently displayed in major museums worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Reflecting his lasting impact and the high regard in which his art is held, Kandinsky's paintings have achieved stunning auction records, with pieces like Murnau mit Kirche II (1910) selling for almost $45 million. His innovative spirit and commitment to advancing art for both himself and future artists are the cornerstones of his enduring legacy.
