Wassily Kandinsky Biography |
| Mar 04 2012 |
| {Articles >> Art History - Artists} |
 |
| Wassily Kandinsky, Small Pleasures, 1913 |
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.
In 1911, Kandinsky and Franz Marc formed the Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider).
In 1912, Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
His early works were representations of landscapes, but quickly moved towards abstract, complex compositions of expressive and energetic shapes and lines. His works are partly inspired by music; titles like Composition and Improvisation reflect this. Working in the early 20th century, Kandinsky was one of the first artists to push his work to total abstraction, and this push happened quite rapidly. In 1909, we see Landscape Near Murnau with Locomotive, a colorful landscape with a post-impressionist flavor. While some of his abstract works like Improvisation 28 (1912) or Little Pleasures (1913) contain references to recognizable landscape and figurative forms, his works soon become totally abstract; for example, Black Lines No. 189 (1913).
Around 1914, Kandinsky returned to Russia. He married Nina Andreievskaya in 1916. He painted little in the period 1914-1921.
From 1922 to 1933, Kandinsky taught design at the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany. This link to Bauhaus, and design in general, can be seen in his work at the time; we see an exploration of the deliberate arrangement of geometric shapes and less of the expressive spontaneity of earlier works.
Kandinsky was concerned with the psychological, emotional and physiological effects of color in art, and wrote extensively on color theory. While Kandinsky's work is spontaneous and aggressive, they are not random; he was methodically searching for a higher visual language system. Form, color, space could be organized and arranged to communicate intellectual and spiritual themes.
Like many artists of the period, Kandinsky was widely read in a range of topics; he was concerned with color, spirituality, psychology, form, theosophy, the occult, science, philosophy, and wrote about all of these topics.
In 1933, Kandinsky moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. For the next decade, his work shifts away from pure abstraction, and takes on a more surreal, cubist flavor; while not quite figurative, the shapes in the works take on a strange biomorphic quality. For example, White Figure, 1943.
He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
Tags: Bauhaus .. Kandinsky