Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia in 1866. Music was a large part of his family life, and the influence of music is apparent in his art. He was also influenced by colorful Russian folk art. Kandinsky studied law in Moscow, and taught at the University of Moscow.

In 1896, Kandinsky, aged 30, left Moscow and moved to Munich, where he enrolled in art school; after his move to Germany, he started to work in a spontaneous, avant-garde, expressionist painting style.

His art education was influenced by exposure to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works; he was particularly interested in their treatment of color. Music also played a large part of his artistic expression.

I was returning, immersed in thought, from my sketching, when on opening the studio door, I was suddenly confronted by a picture of indescribable and incandescent loveliness. Bewildered, I stopped, staring at it. The painting lacked all subject, depicted no identifiable object and was entirely composed of bright colour-patches. Finally I approached closer and only then saw it for what it really was—my own painting, standing on its side on the easel.... One thing became clear to me: that objectiveness, the depiction of objects, needed no place in my paintings, and was indeed harmful to them.

The works of Henri Matisse are often used for children's art education. Although Matisse was a significant modernist artist, with complex, cerebral art theory behind his work, his work is colorful and approachable; this is a great way to introduce kids (and adults) to modern art.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is a significant French artist whose work spans several modernist movements. As Robert Hughes puts it, "Matisse was born in 1869, the year the Cutty Sark was launched. The year he died, 1954, the first hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini Atoll. Not only did he live on, literally, from one world into another; he lived through some of the most traumatic political events in recorded history, the worst wars, the greatest slaughters, the most demented rivalries of ideology, without, it seems, turning a hair." Although he is labelled as a Fauvist and an Expressionist, Matisse, like Picasso and Cezanne, is an artist whose work is often difficult to categorize.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch painter, is one the best known Post-Impressionists. He is know for his Starry Night, his pictures of sunflowers, as well as for infamously cutting off his ear and never selling a painting during his life. Although he did not necessarily want to paint in a conventional way to earn approval, he was deeply troubled by the lack of critical and financial support for his work.

In the same way that the Impressionists sought to portray the visual truth of a scene, so did van Gogh look for truth. But he wanted to communicate not just the visual truth, that is, how something might look in a fleeting moment as Monet did, but also the truth of the subject of the painting.

Josef Albers (1888-1976) worked with large flat, geometric planes of solid colors to demonstrate theories of color contrasts and optical effects created by color. Basic color theory tells us that optical sensations can be created by using particular color combinations and changing their arrangement and proportion.

By using saturated hues of similar value (intensity), and placing them side by side with sharp dividing lines without blending, he demonstrated that an optical effect could be achieved even if the colors used were not complementary on the color wheel. Where the edges of the colors meet, the eye will see a vibrating, glowing effect.

Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Russian born American painter, categorized as abstract expressionist, best known for his extensive series of large-scale color field paintings. The following is a brief, general chronology; for more on Rothko, please explore some of the suggested books and links.

Mark Rothko was born in 1903 as Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia. His parents were Jacob Rothkowitz and Anna Goldin Rothkowitz. Rothko had three siblings, Sonia, Moise, and Albert. In 1910, his father Jacob immigrates to Portland, Oregon, and in by 1913 the rest of the Rothkowitz family joins him. By 1921, Marcus Rothkowitz has shortened his name to Roth, and receives a scholarship to Yale University. At Yale, he writes for a progressive newspaper, The Yale Saturday Evening Pest, and studies, among other things, English, French, physics, philosophy, but no art classes. Rothkowitz does not complete a degree from Yale,and it's not until around 1925, in New York, that he starts to become more intent of fine art and art classes. In 1928, Rothkowitz exhibits in his first group art show with other students from the Art Students League. In 1932 he marries Edith Sachar.

Georges Seurat, a prolific French Post-Impressionist artist of the 19th century, is best known for his Pointillist works. His A sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886 is probably his most famous work. Born in 1859 in Paris, Seurat died in 1891 before he was thirty-two. Despite his short career, he produced a large oevre, some of which (like Grande Jatte) have become iconic works of the 19th century.  His system of color placement to create new colors when viewed from a distance, Pointillism, is also called "divisionism."

He was born to a financially comfortable family. As a young man he attended l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Very early on is his painting career, he found his own personal style, despite his young age.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in 1475 in Caprese, Italy. He lived until 1564, and died in Rome at the ripe old age of 89, which would have been remarkable. Like Leonardo, he is one of the best known figures from the Italian Renaissance. Although he produced many works in his long artistic career, he is probably best known for the Sistine Chapel and the statue of David.

When he was a child, he lived with a stonecutter's family because Michelangelo's father owned a marble quarry. He attributes his later affinity to carving stone to this early exposure to the hammer and chisel.

Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance man, was born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence, Italy. That's a nice easy one to remember, "da Vinci" means "of Vinci." But it still makes you sound smart at parties!