Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4th in 1866, Moscow, Russia. His mother was a European Russian and his father an Asian Russian. His family liked to travel all around Europe (Venice, Rome, Florence and Caucasus. They moved to Odessa (now Ukraine) in 1871. Wassily was an amateur musician playing piano and cello as well as a painter. In 1886 he began to study law and economics at the University of Moscow, but he also continued to paint.
In 1889 the university sent him on a mission to the province of Vologda to paint. He returned with an interest for nonrealistic styles of Russian folk painting. He was impressed by the paintings of Rembrandt in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and also went to Paris for a visual education. He pursued his academic career and in 1893 he was granted the degree equivalent of a doctorate. He felt, however, that art was “a luxury forbidden to a Russian.
In 1896 he came for an important choice. He was offered a professorship in jurisprudence at the University of Dorpat (later called Tartu) in Estonia which was then undergoing Russification. But he turned down the offer and moved to Germany to become a painter. He moved to Munich where he studied at a private school by Anton Azbé. After 2 years he studied in a Munich Academy in the class of Franz von Stuck. Kandinsky emerged from the academy with a diploma in 1900. He then first painted 19th-century realism and then moved to Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) and was influenced by Neo-Impressionism and Expressionism.
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| Der Blaue Reiter (1903) |
He joined many painter groups like: Munich Phalanx group (of which he became president in 1902), the Berlin Sezession group and with the Dresden group that called itself Die Brücke (“The Bridge”). In 1903 in Moscow he had his first one-man show, followed the next year by two others in Poland. Between 1903 and 1908 he traveled from Holland to as far as Tunisia and from Paris and Berlin back to Russia.
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| Colorful Life (1907) |
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| Untitled (aka First Abstract Watercolour) - 1910 |
In 1909 he finally had his breakthrough with his personal style of abstract paintings. He wanted a kind of painting in which colours, lines, and shapes, freed from the distracting business of depicting recognizable objects, might evolve into a visual “language”. His historical breakthrough came in 1910 with an untitled painting also known as "First Abstract Watercolour" which is regarded as a study for the 1913 Composition VII. Many paintings were on his route te become more abstract like: "Blue Mountain" (1908–1909), "Landscape with Tower" (1909) and by 1910 "Improvisation XIV" is already practically abstract.
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| Blue Mountain (1908-1909) |
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| Landscape with tower (1909) |
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| Improvisation XIV (1910) |
After that come such major works as "Picture with a Black Arch" (1912), "Autumn II" (1912), and "Black Lines" (1913) which is seen as his artistical peak. In 1909 Wassily helped to found the New Artists’ Association (Neue Künstlervereinigung). Following a disagreement within this group, he and the German painter Franz Marc founded in 1911 an informally organized rival group, which took the name Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), from the title of one of Kandinsky’s 1903 pictures.
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| Autumn II (1912) |
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| Picture with a Black Arch (1912) |
In 1914 he moved back to Moscow with the intention of reintegrating himself into Russian life. His intention was encouraged by the soviet government. In 1918 he became a professor at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the arts section of the People’s Commissariat for Public Instruction. In 1919 he created the Institute of Artistic Culture and became director of the Moscow Museum for Pictorial Culture. He also helped to organize 22 museums across the Soviet Union. In 1920 he was made a professor at the University of Moscow and was honoured with a one-man show organized by the state. In 1921 he founded the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences. But by then the Soviet government was banning avant-garde art in favour of Social Realism. So by the end of 1921 he and his wife moved to Berlin.
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| Moscow I (Red Square) - 1913 |
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| Blue Segment (1921) |
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| Development in Brown (1933) |
His work started to change dramatically in style as seen in paintings like: "White Line" and "Blue Segment". In 1922 he was offered a teaching post at Weimar in the already famous Bauhaus school of architecture and applied art. His most important painting from this time was "Punkt und Linie zu Fläche" (Point and Line to Plane). When World War II broke out he left to Paris since the nazis disliked the Bauhaus style and forced to close art schools. One of his last paintings made in Germany is "Development in Brown" which referred to Nazi brown shirted storm troopers. In his last days in France he called his style concrete rather than abstract. Some works from this periode are: "Violet Dominant", "Dominant Curve", "Fifteen", "Moderation", and "Tempered Élan".
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| Violent Dominant (1934) |
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| Composition IX (1936) |
Kandinsky died in December 13th 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
