Kandinsky

Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky was to become the world's first modern abstract painter. He showed an early interest in art when at school in Moscow and Odessa. But he actually began his professional life as a lawyer, graduating from the prestigious Moscow State University, and subsequently taking up professorships there and in Estonia.

In 1896 at the age of 30, Kandinsky overthrew his legal career and began studying art in Munich and subsequently in Berlin. He began to emerge as an art theorist as well as an artist, with a particular interest in abstract art. He travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa seeking inspiration.

In 1914 he returned to Moscow but in 1922 he escaped from Bolshevik Russia and once again settled in Germany. Over the next few years he came to international attention as an abstract art theorist and artist. However, with the rise of the Nazis in 1933, he again had to make an escape, this time to Paris.

Wassily Kandinsky became a French citizen and died in France in 1944.

Kandinsky had a fascination with colour and saw a relationship between painting and composing music. Some experts see this as symptomatic of a condition called synthesia. He used colour to express his experiences, not to describe the subject matter of his paintings. He saw colour as independent of form and he attributed particular emotions to particular colours. For Kandinsky, art was spiritual and emotional and he wanted his art to transcend recognised forms. Colour was the key to this.

The images used in this website have been taken from the WikiArts website www.wikiart.org/en/wassily-kandinsky.