Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
THE HARMONY OF COLOR
“All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.”
—Wassily Kandinsky
Although Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky is hailed as one of the founding fathers of abstract art, the designation is a bit of a misnomer. To be sure, Kandinsky’s art was abstract; however, unlike other artists of the genre who used their art to intentionally distort the realities of the physical world, Kandinsky’s art neither represented nor resembled any form of reality. Rather, he sought to create a purely spiritual encounter by way of the colors and shapes he employed in his art.
Kandinsky attended the University of Moscow where he studied law and economics and eventually taught. Years later, he gave up his professorship and moved to Munich to attend the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1911, he co-founded a Munich artists’ circle, Der Blaue Reiter, or The Blue Riders, whose members shared a collective belief in the interconnectedness of art and spirituality.
Kandinsky developed an early appreciation of music thanks to his parents, both musicians. Indeed, music is a central theme in his artwork, which is infused with vibrant color and compelling lines and shapes that seemingly flow into and out of each other like the notes of an expressive concerto. It’s hardly surprising, then, that Kandinsky named many of his works “Improvisations,” “Impressions,” and “Compositions.”
Kandinsky was also a profound art theorist and writer. He authored many highly philosophical tomes during his lifetime, including the seminal “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” In the 1930s, he fled Germany for France after National Socialists confiscated his art and classified it as “degenerate.” —RJR
Notable works: Composition V, 1911; Painting with Green Center, 1913; Yellow, Red, Blue, 1925.