Wassily Kandinsky

Lore & Background

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vassily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. He began painting studies at age 30, after studying law and economics. In 1896, he settled in Munich, studying at Anton Ažbe's private school and the Academy of Fine Arts. He was first the teacher and then the partner of German artist Gabriele Münter. He returned to Moscow in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, he became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. He returned to Germany in 1920, taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933, then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939.

Reader's Guide

Kandinsky's significance lies in his role as a pioneer of abstraction in Western art, a development that followed a long period of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called his devotion to inner beauty and spiritual desire 'inner necessity,' a central aspect of his art. His book 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art' (1910) and 'Point and Line to Plane' (1926) echoed theosophical tenets. His work was influenced by Monet's Haystacks, Wagner's Lohengrin, and theosophy. His legacy includes his teaching at the Bauhaus and his abstract works from the 1911–1914 period. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Did You Know?

• Kandinsky was the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève.
• He helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting after the Russian Revolution.
• He became a French citizen in 1939.
• One of his great-grandmothers was Princess Gantimurova.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Frankly, I think there is something wrong with Jawlensky's dots [in his paintings, then]. Anybody can pick up that style if they want to." — Wassily Kandinsky "Mystery, speaking through mysteries. Isn't that meaning? Isn't that the conscious or unconsciousnes purpose of the compulsive urge to create?" — Wassily Kandinsky "Opposites and contradictions, that is our harmony." — Wassily Kandinsky "German original: Gegensätze und Widerspruche, dass ist unsere Harmonie." — Wassily Kandinsky