Wassily Kandinsky, a life around color

Wassily Kandinsky was the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression. Thus, Wassily abandoned the use of “objects” in his paintings, anticipating abstraction.

Kandisnky was a multifaceted artist, he was not only a painter but also an engraver and writer.. On a global scale, this Russian artist is considered one of the creators of pure abstraction in modern painting.

After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, 1911–14) and began painting completely abstractly. His forms evolved from his early fluid and organic works to geometric and eventually pictographic works.

Kandisnky in Russia, his homeland

Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4, 1866, in Moscow, Russia. He was born in a wealthy and multicultural home.

His mother was a Muscovite, one of his great-grandmothers was a Mongolian princess, and his father was a native of Kyakhta, a Siberian city near the Chinese border. Thus, the boy grew up with a cultural heritage that was partly European and partly Asian.

His family was gentle and fond of travel. While still a child, he became acquainted with Venice, Rome, Florence, the Caucasus and the Crimean Peninsula.

His mother had a strong musical inclination and his father worked as a tea merchant. When Kandinsky was only about 5 years old, his parents divorced.

The boy moved to Odessa (Ukraine) to live with an aunt. There he learned to play the piano and cello in primary school, and also studied drawing with a private tutor.

Since his childhood, he had an intimate experience with art. His childhood works reveal quite specific color combinations, infused by his premise: “each color lives by its mysterious life.”

Kandinsky’s Youth

In 1886, he began studying law and economics at Moscow University. The young man continued to have unusual feelings about color as he contemplated the city’s vivid architecture and its collections of icons.

In 1889, the university sent him on an ethnographic mission to the Vologda province in the forested north. From this trip, Kandinsky returned with an interest in the often wild and unrealistic styles of Russian folk painting. This interest would not abandon the young man. That same year, he discovered the Rembrandts at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and continued his visual education with a trip to Paris.

According to his own testimony, at this stage, he had lost much of his initial enthusiasm for the social sciences.. However, he continued his academic career and in 1893 he was awarded a doctorate degree.

At first, he resisted his artistic inclination, considering that art was “a luxury forbidden to a Russian.”. Finally, after a period of teaching at the university, he accepted a position as director of the photographic section of a Moscow printing house.

In 1892 Kandinsky married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina. Shortly afterward, he accepted a position at the Moscow Law School and he maintained his artistic taste as a secondary activity.

However, two events prompted his abrupt career change in 1896. The first came when he attended an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow the previous year, which was his first experience of non-representational art. The second was hearing Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre. Thus, Kandinsky’s life and career would take a new direction from which there would be no turning back.

The beginning of Kandinsky’s artistic career

That 1896, as he approached his 30th birthday, Kandinsky decided to abandon his career as a lawyer and move to Munich.. His language was not a problem, as he had learned German from his maternal grandmother when he was a child.

In Munich, he decided to dedicate himself full-time to the study of art.. He enrolled at the Munich Academy of Arts, although much of his artistic learning was self-taught.

Kandinsky stated that the work of Claude Monet was one of his greatest influences. In Monet’s paintings, theme played a secondary role in relation to color.

It was as if reality and fairy tale were intertwined.. That was the secret of Kandinsky’s early work, which was based on folk art and remained so even as his work became more complex.

Between 1902 and 1907, the artist remained itinerant. He visited a list of countries including France, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Italy and Russia, before settling permanently in Murnau.

During his travels, he painted a series of alpine landscapes between 1908 and 1910.. His famous work belongs to this period. The blue mountainwhich explicitly described a scenic view of nature through colors.

Unlike other painters of the time, his use of color on canvas was extremely different. His color palette was used in order to express emotions rather than provide a description of nature or subject matter..

Munich and the Blue Rider group

In 1909, he founded the Munich Association of New Artists of which he was also president.. However, his radical thoughts did not mesh well with those of some mainstream artists and led to the group’s dissolution in 1911.

The dissolution of the Munich Association of New Artists led to the formation of a new group, the Blue Rider; this time, with like-minded artists. The group organized two exhibitions and even published an annual calendar. However, with the outbreak of World War I, Kandinsky returned to Russia.

The year 1910 was crucial for Kandinsky and the art world. In that year, Wassily Kandinsky revolutionized the art scene with the production of his first abstract watercolor.

During this period, he published the treatise On the spiritual in art In the Blue Rider Calendar, he also promoted abstract art and the autonomous use of colors. Until this moment, color had been at the service of painting in a purely utilitarian way, that is, it served as a complement to represent an object, a landscape, etc. Kandinsky paved the way and separated this utilitarian use to give color complete autonomy.

Kandinsky and his return to Russia

With the end of the Russian Revolution, the artist held an important position in the Commissariat (government office) of Popular Culture and the Moscow Academy. Returning to Russia, he was absorbed in Russian cultural policy and collaborated with art education and museum reform from 1918 to 1921..

He organized twenty-two museums and became the director of the Museum of Pictorial Culture. In 1920, he was appointed professor at Moscow University.

Engaging himself less on the canvas, he devoted much of his time to imparting artistic knowledge. For his classes, the artist followed a program based on analysis of shapes and colors.

In 1921, Kandinsky founded the Academy of Arts and Sciences and became its vice president. By the end of that year, the Soviet attitude toward art changed. His ideas and his expressionist vision of art were rejected by the radical members of the Institute. Kandinsky was judged by his peers to be ‘too distinctive’ and, as a consequence, he decided to leave Russia.

Reception in Germany, Weimar period

In 1921, the architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Weimar Bauhaus, invited Kandinsky to Germany and he accepted the invitation.

The following year, he was teaching painting classes for beginners and trained professionals. Kandinsky dedicated himself to teaching them his theory of color with new elements of the psychology of form.

In 1926, he published his second theoretical book, Point and line to the planewhich described in detail his development of study forms. The work emphasized geometric shapes: triangle, circle, semicircle, straight line, curves and planes.

As he experimented with the use of color, his works would undergo new changes over time. Works from this era highlighted individual geometric elements that paved the way for cool colors.

In 1933, after the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, the painter settled in France.

Stay in the city of light

In Paris, he stayed in a small apartment while he carried out his creative activity. Most of his works from this period used original color compositions occasionally mixing sand with paint to give a rustic granular texture.

The paintings from his Parisian period have splendid color, rich invention, and charming humor.

In July 1937, accompanied by other artists of the time, he presented his work at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich.. Although the exhibition was well attended, 57 of his works were confiscated by the Nazis.

The master of color and abstraction died of cerebrovascular disease in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, on December 13, 1944. But his memory lives on in his work and his paintings will always be immortal.

Kandinsky continues to be greatly admired for his paintings and for being the creator of abstract art.. He invented a language of abstract forms with which he replaced the forms of nature.

He wanted to reflect the universe in his own visionary world. He felt that painting possessed the same power as music; and that the line and color had to correspond to the vibrations of the human soul.

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