Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944). Russian-born painter, printmaker, designer, teacher, and art theorist, who became a German citizen in 1927 and a French citizen in 1939, one of the most important figures in the development of abstract art. He was born in Moscow, the son of a prosperous tea merchant, and grew up in Odessa. From 1886 to 1892 he studied law and economics at Moscow University and immediately after graduation began lecturing in law there. In 1895 he worked briefly as art director for a printing firm in Moscow and in 1896 he turned down the offer of a professorship in law at the University of Tartu (also called Dorpat) in Estonia because he had decided to become a painter. He had been interested in art for some time, and was greatly stimulated by an exhibition of French paintings that he saw in Moscow in 1895 (or 1891?), particularly one of Monet's Haystack pictures, which he thought communicated something about colour and light rather than about haystacks: ‘I had the feeling that here the subject of the picture was in a sense the painting itself', he later recalled, ‘and I wondered if one couldn't go much further along the same route.’ In 1896 he moved to Munich, one of the major artistic centres of Europe; this was to be the focus of his activities until 1914, but he travelled widely in this period and spent a year in Paris, 1906–7. Initially he studied at the art school run by Anton Azbe (1861–1905), meeting Jawlensky and Werefkin there, then at the Munich Academy under Franz von Stuck in 1900. He was older and better educated than his contemporaries and tended to assume a position of leadership among them. One of his fellow students at the Academy was Paul Klee, who later became a close friend. Klee said that Kandinsky's ‘exceptionally handsome, open face inspired a certain deep confidence’ in those around him, and recalled that the student Kandinsky ‘used to mix his colours on the palette with the greatest diligence and a kind of scholarliness'. He was indeed so methodical and fastidious in his working methods (contrary to the standard image of artists) that he joked he could paint in evening dress. His father provided him with a generous allowance, and he lived well with his wife (who was also his cousin) in Schwabing, the bohemian quarter of Munich. In 1901 he was one of the founders of the exhibiting society Phalanx, which also ran an art school, at which he taught; one of his students was Gabriele Münter, who—following the breakdown of his marriage—became his lover until the First World War separated them (from 1908 they divided their time mainly between Munich and Murnau, a picturesque market town nearby, where they bought a house that became a meeting-place for avant-garde artists).

Kandinsky's work at the turn of the century was much influenced by Art Nouveau (Munich was one of its major centres) and had strong reminiscences of Russian folk art (his subjects included fanciful fairytale scenes). In the first decade of the century he exhibited in Berlin (at the Sezession), Dresden (with Die Brücke), Moscow, Paris (at the Salon d'Automne), Vienna, Warsaw, and elsewhere. Landscape was his chief subject at this time, and he constantly reworked and simplified his favourite motifs. His colouring became very intense, under the influence of Fauvism, and his forms became flatter and more attenuated until they began to lose their representational identity. In 1909 (the year in which he was one of the founders of the Neue Künstlervereinigung) he began a series of Improvisations, in 1910 of Compositions, and in 1911 of Impressions; in these he eliminated all representational content to arrive—in about 1910—at pure abstraction. The choice of names, deriving from musical terminology, was significant, for like the Symbolists he was interested in analogies between colours and sounds (a great lover of music, he could play the cello and piano and was a friend of Arnold Schoenberg, whose revolutionary atonality he equated with his own experiments). Kandinsky himself described how he came to recognize that colour and line in themselves could be sufficient vehicles for the expression of emotions; he returned to his studio one evening and failed to recognize one of his own paintings that was lying on its side, seeing in it a picture ‘of extraordinary beauty glowing with an inner radiance … Now I knew for certain that the subject-matter was detrimental for my paintings'. He discussed the issue of abstraction in his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst, which was published late in 1911 (it bears the date 1912) and is the best known of his writings (it has been translated into English as The Art of Spiritual Harmony (1914), On the Spiritual in Art (1946), and Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular (1947); it is now usually referred to as Concerning the Spiritual in Art). His views about the nature of art were influenced by mysticism and Theosophy; he did not completely repudiate representation, but he held that the ‘pure’ artist seeks to express only ‘inner and essential’ feelings and ignores the superficial and fortuitous.

Even some of Kandinsky's closest associates were puzzled and dismayed by his development of abstract art, and when one of his paintings was rejected by the Neue Künstlervereinigung in 1911 he resigned and founded a rival organization, the Blaue Reiter. The brief lifetime of this group (broken up by the First World War) marked a period of intense achievement and growing fame for Kandinsky, during which his work was shown at the Knave of Diamonds exhibition in Moscow (1912), the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne (1912), the Armory Show in New York (1913), the ‘Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon’ at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin (1913), and the third exhibition of the Moderne Kunstkring in Amsterdam (1913). The major work he showed at the ‘Herbstsalon’ was Composition VI (Hermitage, St Petersburg, 1913), a huge, gloriously coloured apocalyptic vision. Other important paintings of the time include Light Picture and Black Lines (both Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1913), which he later singled out as Non-Objective works—totally abstract in concept rather than abstracted from nature.

As a Russian citizen, Kandinsky had to leave Munich at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and by the end of the year he was back in Moscow (via Switzerland, Italy, and the Balkans). He had obtained a divorce in 1910 (following a legal separation in 1904) and in 1917 he made a very happy second marriage to a much younger Russian woman. This encouraged him to re-integrate into Russian life, and after the October Revolution in 1917 he became highly active as a teacher and administrator in various cultural organizations instituted by the new Soviet regime (see INKHUK, NARKOMPROS, and VKHUTEMAS). However, he was out of sympathy with the growing tide of ideas that subordinated fine art to industrial design in the service of the proletariat (even though he made designs for cups and saucers himself), and in 1922 he accepted an offer to take up a teaching post at the Bauhaus, where he remained until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. He directed the mural painting workshop and also taught elements of form and colour on the preliminary course followed by all students. His own painting of this period became more geometrical, but in addition to circles and triangles he used arrow-like forms and wavy lines in a manner that ran counter to the typical Bauhaus concern with geometrical purity (Swinging, Tate Gallery, London, 1925). The Bauhaus printing workshop produced his portfolio entitled Kleine Welten (Small Worlds, 1922–3), containing drypoints, lithographs and woodcuts and marking perhaps the height of his achievement as a graphic artist, and he also branched out into various types of design work (including stage sets and costumes and ceramic tiles). In 1926, to mark his 60th birthday, an exhibition of his work toured Germany, and by this time he was internationally renowned (his reputation was spread in the USA by the Blaue Vier).

In 1934 Kandinsky moved to Paris and spent the remaining decade of his life in the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, a much admired and respected figure. He continued to paint and write up to his death, although he had difficulty obtaining materials during the Second World War and often used board rather than canvas. The paintings of this last period represent something of a synthesis between the organic style of his Munich period and the more geometrical manner of his Bauhaus period, but there was also a new element of fantasy in the use of amoeba-like forms that show the impact of Surrealism (Sky Blue, Pompidou Centre, Paris, 1940). His influence was immense, through both his paintings and his writings. Examples of his paintings are in many of the world's leading collections, with particularly rich representations in, for example, the Lenbachhaus, Munich (see LENBACH), the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Pompidou Centre, Paris (many presented by the artist's widow). The best collection of his writings is Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, edited and translated by Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo (2 vols., 1982).

Wassily Kandinsky

The Russian painter and graphic artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the great masters of modern art and the outstanding representative of pure abstract painting that dominated the first half of the 20th century.

Wassily Kandinsky produced his early work in Russia, his mature and most revolutionary work in Germany, and his later work in France. He invented a language of abstract forms with which he replaced the forms of nature. His ultimate intention was to mirror the universe in his visionary world. He felt that painting possessed the same power as music and that sign, line, and color ought to correspond to the vibrations of the human soul.

Kandinsky was born on Dec. 4, 1866, in Moscow; his father was a tea merchant. When he was 5 the family moved to Odessa. The young Kandinsky drew, wrote poems, and played the piano and the cello. Between 1886 and 1892 he studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. In 1889, as a member of an ethnographic mission to the Vologda district, he was highly impressed by the interior decorations of the village houses. In 1893 he accepted a position on the law faculty of the university.

Beginnings as an Artist

Only in 1896, when he was 30 years old, did Kandinsky decide to become an artist. Of importance for his artistic development was the exhibition of French impressionists in Moscow in 1895, particularly the works of Claude Monet. In Monet's paintings the subject matter played a secondary role to color. Reality and fairy tale intermixed—that was the secret of Kandinsky's early work, which was based on folk art, and it remained so even later although more intellectualized.

Between 1897 and 1899 Kandinsky attended the Azbé School of Painting in Munich, and in 1900 he was a pupil of Franz von Stuck. In 1901 Kandinsky founded the artists' group Phalanx and taught at their private art school. The following year he met the painter Gabriele Münter, with whom he lived until 1916. The works of his Phalanx period, from 1901 to 1904, are in the Jugendstil. In 1903 Kandinsky traveled to Venice, Odessa, and Moscow; in 1904 to Holland and Tunisia; in 1906 to Odessa and Rapallo. From 1905 on he was a member of the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. He spent 1906-1907 in Sèvres near Paris. He exhibited with the Brücke (Bridge) artists in Dresden and returned to Munich in 1908.

Kandinsky's early impressionist-inspired paintings and those of his Jugendstil period are strong in color, and color continued to dominate in his landscapes of Murnau, where he bought a house in 1909 (for example, Railway at Murnau, 1909-1910). He was one of the founders of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artists' Associaton) in Munich in 1909, of which he became the chairman.

First Abstract Art

The year 1910 was crucial for Kandinsky and for world art. Kandinsky produced his first abstract watercolor, in which all elements of representation and association seem to have disappeared; he also wrote Über das Geistige in der Kunst (1912; Concerning the Spiritual in Art), the first theorization of a nonobjective form of art ever elaborated by an artist and his most influential treatise. He met Franz Marc in 1910, and in 1911, after a trip to Russia, he met Paul Klee, Jean Arp, and August Macke. Kandinsky and Marc founded the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group in Munich in 1911 and exhibited with them. A second exhibition followed in 1912, and the Almanach Blauer Reiter was published. The exhibition was repeated in the Sturm Gallery in Berlin, for which a special Kandinsky album was issued.

In 1913 Kandinsky produced a series of color lithographs and prose poems Klänge (Sounds) and took part in the first Herbstsalon (Autumn Exhibition). The Blaue Reiter disbanded in 1914. In his early abstract works vehement linear strokes are combined with powerful patches of color, as in Composition V (1911) and With the Black Arch (1912).

Return to Russia

When World War I broke out, Kandinsky returned to Russia. In 1917 he married Nina Andreewsky. During the Russian Revolution the artist occupied an important post at the Commissariat of Popular Culture and at the Academy in Moscow. He organized 22 museums and became the director of the Museum of Pictorial Culture. In 1920 he was appointed professor at the University of Moscow. The following year he founded the Academy of Arts and Sciences and became its vice president. When, at the end of that year, the Soviet attitude to art changed, Kandinsky left Russia.

Years in Germany and France

In 1922 Kandinsky became a professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Together with Klee, Alexei von Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger he founded the Blaue Vier (Blue Four) group in 1924. When, in 1925, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, Kandinsky moved with it. In 1926 he published the principles of his teaching in Punkt und Linie zur Fläche (Point and Line to Plane). His art from about 1920 to 1924 has been defined as his architectural period. The shapes are more precise than before; there are points, straight or broken lines, single or in bunches, and snakelike, radiating segments of circles; the color is cooler, more subdued, with occasional outbursts of earlier expressionist tonality. This period is exemplified in Composition VIII (1923). From 1925 to 1927 he emphasized circles in his paintings, as can be seen in Several Circles (1926).

Kandinsky became a German citizen in 1928, and the same year he designed sets for Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition for the Dessau Theater. In 1929 Kandinsky held his first one-man show in Paris and traveled to Belgium and the French Riviera. In 1930 he had another exhibition in Paris. For the large architectural exhibition in Berlin of 1931 he produced wall decorations. When the Bauhaus was closed in 1932, Kandinsky moved to Berlin, and the following year he left for Paris.

Kandinsky's romantic, or concrete, period, from 1927 to 1933, in which his use of pictorial signs was abundant and his color was softer, is exemplified in Between the Light (1931). It led to the last phase of his art, that spent in France, which was an intellectual synthesis of his previous strivings.

Kandinsky settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. He met Joan Miró, Robert Delaunay, and Piet Mondrian, and a friendship developed with Antoine Pevsner, Arp, and Alberto Magnelli. In 1939 Kandinsky became a French citizen. He died on Dec. 13, 1944, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The paintings of his Paris period have a Russian splendor of color, a richness of formal invention, and a delightful humor, as in Composition X (1939), Sky Blue (1940), and Reciprocal Accord (1942).

Further Reading

Kandinsky's views are in his Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Painting in Particular (1912; trans. 1947). The most comprehensive study of Kandinsky is Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work (trans. 1958). Max Bill, Wassily Kandinsky (1951), with articles by various contributors, contains important biographical and art-historical data. Paul Overy, Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye (1969), applies Gestalt psychological and philosophical viewpoints to the assessment of Kandinsky's art. □

Wassily Kandinsky

Born: December 4, 1866
Moscow, Russia
Died: December 13, 1944
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Russian painter and graphic artist

The Russian painter and graphic artist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the great masters of modern art, as well as the outstanding representative of pure abstract painting (using only colors and forms) that dominated the first half of the twentieth century.

Early years in Russia

Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4, 1866, in Moscow, Russia. His father was a tea merchant. When he was five years old the family moved to Odessa, Russia. The young Kandinsky drew, wrote poems, and played the piano and the cello. Because his family was fond of traveling, Kandinsky got to see the Italian cities of Venice, Rome, and Florence as a young boy. He was also influenced by the imposing Muscovite (from Moscow) buildings such as the Kremlin.

Between 1886 and 1892 Kandinsky studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. In 1889 he was a member of a team formed to study the life of the people in the Vologda district in northwestern Russia. He was highly impressed by their folk art and the interior decorations of the village houses. The use of forms and colors became an influence in his art. In 1893 he accepted a position on the university's law faculty.

Beginnings as an artist

It was not until 1896, when Kandinsky was thirty years old, that he decided to become an artist. His artistic development was shaped greatly by an exhibition of French impressionist painters that was shown in Moscow in 1895. The impressionists used values of color and light to show their subjects rather than painting in fine detail. The works of Claude Monet (1840–1926) attracted Kandinsky's attention. In Monet's paintings the subject matter played a secondary role to color. It was as though reality and fairy tale were intermixed. That was the secret of Kandinsky's early work, which was based on folk art, and it remained so even as his work became more complex.

The year 1910 was crucial for Kandinsky and for the art world. Kandinsky produced his first abstract watercolor. In that work all elements of representation (the actual look of a subject) seem to have disappeared. In continuing his early abstract works he used strong straight-line strokes combined with powerful patches of color.

Return to Russia

When World War I (1914–18; a war in which Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) broke out, Kandinsky returned to Russia. In 1917 he married Nina Andreewsky. During the Russian Revolution (1917), which overthrew the czar, the ruler of Russia, the artist held an important post at the Commissariat (government bureau) of Popular Culture and at the Academy in Moscow. He organized twenty-two museums and became the director of the Museum of Pictorial Culture. In 1920 he was appointed professor at the University of Moscow. The following year he founded the Academy of Arts and Sciences and became its vice president. At the end of that year, the Soviet attitude toward art changed, and Kandinsky left Russia.

Years in Germany and France

In 1922 Kandinsky became a professor at the Bauhaus (a school of art, architecture, and design) in Weimar, Germany. His art from about 1920 to 1924 has been called his architectural period because the shapes he used were more precise than before. There are points, straight or broken lines, single or in bunches, and snakelike, radiating segments of circles. The color is cooler, and more subdued (softer, quieter).

Kandinsky became a German citizen in 1928. In 1929 Kandinsky held his first oneman show in Paris, France, and traveled to Belgium and the French Riviera. In 1930 he had another exhibition in Paris. In 1931 he produced wall decorations for a large architectural exhibition that was held in Berlin, Germany. When the Bauhaus closed in 1932, Kandinsky moved to Berlin. A year after that he moved to Paris.

From 1927 to 1933, Kandinsky's paintings were characterized by abundant use of pictorial (like real pictures) signs and softer color. This is called his romantic or concrete period. It led to the last phase of his art, spent in France, which was a synthesis (blending) of his previous periods. The paintings of his Paris period have splendid color, rich invention, and delightful humor. In 1939 Kandinsky became a French citizen. He died on December 13, 1944, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

Kandinsky is still greatly admired today for his own paintings and for being the originator of abstract art. He invented a language of abstract forms with which he replaced the forms of nature. He wanted to mirror the universe in his own visionary world. He felt that painting possessed the same power as music and that sign, line, and color ought to correspond to the vibrations of the human soul.

For More Information

Bill, Max. Wassily Kandinsky. Paris: Maeght, 1951.

Grohmann, Will. Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1958.

Messer, Thomas M. Vasily Kandinsky. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1997.

Overy, Paul. Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye. New York: Praeger, 1969.

Weiss, Peg. Kandinsky and Old Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

Wassily Kandinsky , 1866–1944, Russian abstract painter and theorist. Usually regarded as the originator of abstract art, Kandinsky abandoned a legal career for painting at 30 when he moved to Munich. In subsequent trips to Paris he came into contact with the art of Gauguin , neoimpressionism (see postimpressionism ), and fauvism . He then developed his ideas concerning the power of pure color and nonrepresentational painting. His first work in this mode was completed in 1910, the year in which he wrote an important theoretical study, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912, tr. 1947 and 1977). In this work he examines the psychological effects of color and his concept of the kinship between music and art.

Kandinsky exhibited with the Brücke group, and with Franz Marc and others he founded the Blaue Reiter group. In 1915 he returned to Moscow, where he taught and directed artistic activities. During the early 1920s his style evolved from riotous bursts of color in his "Improvisations" to more precise, geometrically arranged compositions. In 1921 he returned to Germany and the next year joined the Bauhaus faculty. In 1926 he wrote Point and Line to Plane (tr. 1947), which includes an analysis of geometric forms in art. At the outset of World War II, he went to France, where he spent the rest of his life. In American public collections, Kandinsky is particularly well represented in the Guggenheim Museum, New York City, and California's Pasadena Art Museum.

Bibliography: See his Reminiscences (1913; tr. in Modern Artists on Art, ed. by R. L. Herbert, 1964); biographies by J. Lassaigne (1964) and J. Hahl-Koch (1994); P. Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: 1896–1914 (1982); V. E. Barnett, Kandinsky: At the Guggenheim (1983); C. V. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915–1933 (1983); Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Staff, Kandinsky in Paris, 1934–1944 (1985); A. and L. Vezin, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider (1992); T. M. Messer, Vasily Kandinsky (1997); U. Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1944: The Journey to Abstraction (1999).

Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944) Russian painter and theorist. His experiments with abstraction were revolutionary. His early abstract paintings, including the many numbered Compositions, express great lyricism. From 1911 he was an active member of the Blaue Reiter. His writings, especially Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1914), show the influence of Oriental art philosophy. After World War I, his work became more controlled. White Line (1920) and In the Black Circle (1921) show the beginnings of a refinement of geometrical form that developed during his years at the Bauhaus (1922–33).