Kandinsky, Wassily
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1966. His family moved to Odesa on the Black Sea in 1871 where Wassily studied at school and took music and drawing lessons. Kandinsky recollected that drawing and painting later were pulling him out of reality and from his early childhood he thought that each colour lived its magical life. Following the wish of his parents, Wassily enrolled in the law faculty of the Moscow University in 1886. The future artist interrupted his studies and went on an ethnographic expedition to the Vologda province in 1889. The folk art of northern Russia – folk toys, carved spinning wheels, embroideries and shop sings – would inspire him for many years to come. Kandinsky successfully completed his law studies and was invited to teach at the Moscow University in 1893. He was a director of the Moscow printing house “I. N. Kushnerev and Co” in 1895-1896.
After visiting the exhibition of Claude Monet (1840-1926) in Moscow and listening to Richard Wagner’s ( 1813-1883) opera Lohengrin in 1895 Kandinsky decided to become an artist and left Russia to Germany in 1896. Wassily enrolled into the art school of Anton Ažbe (1962-1905) in Munich where his fellow students were Igor Grabar (1871-1960) and Alexej von Jawlensky (1865-1941) and attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1900-1901 where his teacher was Franz von Stuck (1863-1928).
In 1901 Kandinsky together with German and Swiss artists founded the Phalanx art group. From 1903 the abstract elements began to appear in his bright figurative paintings more and more. In the 1900s he painted and travelled in Europe extensively and helped to found the Munich New Artists’ Association (the Neue Künstlervereinigung München) in 1909. Kandinsky published his famous treatise, “On the Spiritual in Art”, to promote the abstract art in 1910 and formed the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), one of the two world-famous German art groups, in 1911. The members of the group included Alexej von Jawlensky, August Macke (1877-1914), Franz Marc (1880-1916) and Paul Klee (1879-1940). Kandinsky’s art became purely abstract. He took part in the Knave of Diamond exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and had his first personal show in 1911.
Wassily Kandinsky moved back to Moscow in 1914 where he taught in Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios), was a Vice-President of the State Academy of Art Sciences, the Chairman of the All-Russian Art Purchasing Commission and gave lectures on Modern Art at the Moscow University as a visiting professor. During his stay in Russia, he painted figurative as well as geometric abstract paintings. In 1921 he took part in the First Exhibition of Russian Art in Berlin and was invited to teach at the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius (1883-1969), its founder. Kandinsky stayed there till 1933 and became the world-famous artist and the leading advocate of abstract art publishing his second book on the theory of abstraction, “Point and Line to Plane”, in 1926.
When Bauhaus was dissolved in 1933 Kandinsky settled in Paris. His abstract paintings of this period started to incorporate surreal elements and are sometimes called biomorphic reflecting the synthesis of different elements in his works.
Works by Wassily Kandinsky are present in the world most important public art museums and private collections.
