Akhtyrka kandinsky biography

Wassily Wasilyevich Kandinsky
Pseudonymous: Wassily Kandinsky

Date and place of birth: 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866. Moscow, Russia.
Date and place of death: 13 December 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France

Wassily Kandinsky was a russian painter and theorist. He was born of an aristocratic family in Moscow in 16 December 1866. At the age of thirty he changed dramatically the direction of his professional life, refusing an offer of a professorship in Law and Economics and moving to Munich to initiate his studies in painting. It was 1896 and the city had a reputation of being one of the most serious and experimental art centers in Europe.

Kandinsky has always been interested in the latest discoveries of science. He contributed greatly to develop and to establish a solid basis for the contemporary and future generations of artists. “With his writings and erudite rationalization of the problems of painting acting as a constant stimulus to his circle of friends: both Marc and Klee claimed that without him they would never have had the courage to continue.”1

Kandinsky played the role of a leader and organized and founded several avant-garde groups. “From 1902 he was a member of the Berlin Secession, and then a founder-member and elected President of the New Association of Munich Artists of 1909, which he was forced to leave because of internal dissension, founding as a result of this break the Blue Rider group of 1911.” 2

He became a great leader of the Munich avant-garde due to his talent to absorb diverse changes in society portraying them in brilliant writings. His first book, published in 1912, provoked considerable reflexions on the evolution of art. “Über das Geistige in der Kunst” or “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” is acknowledged as the first theoretical foundation of the abstractionism and its author a crucial pillar for the modern art.

The challenge of acknowledging a completely new world and organizing its new range of possibilities was embraced by Kandinsky. Established paradigms were subject of dramatic changes and it affected deeply the contemporary artists thoughts. Kandinsky’s literary talent made great contributions in this field, questioning the duties of the artist in society in a more scientific way, as it is clear in some statements of “The Spiritual in Art” as well as in “Point and Line to Plane”.

It is known that one of the greatest events in science: the split of atom had influenced partially Kandinsky’s theories. In “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” Kandinsky describes the impact of such discovery: “The collapse of the atom model was equivalent, in my soul, to the collapse of the whole world.  Suddenly the thickest walls fell.  I would not have been amazed if a stone appeared before my eye in the air, melted, and became invisible.”

Kandinsky constructed his art legacy through an interesting gradual process. While traveling numerous times in Europe he was being influenced by many art scenes and simultaneously shaping his own thoughts.

His early paintings were in its majority related to peasant art. Later on, when living in Munich, he painted medieval fantasies and landscapes influenced by the Jugendstil (the German version of Art Nouveau). Characteristics such as flatness and decorative details were then differing from his previous style.

A few years later, Kandinsky was particularly interested in the Post-Impressioninsts, which had highlighted enormously the primitive appeal of pure colour. Further on, such influence turned elemental in Kandinsky’s experiments with colour and turned into a remarkable aspect in his works. It is available at the chapter “About Painting” in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” some interesting observations on the psychology of colour. “Kandinsky’s quest for an universal means of communication apart from nature, is based on this case on color perception and sensation.” 3

According to the author Neville Weston, Kandinsky’s paintings can be approximately divided into four groups:
“the 1908-10 polychromatic landscapes of the Murnau period mixing Fauvism and Expressionism; the 1910-20 romantic improvisations and compositions which had freely abstract and music qualities; the sharper geometrical astrological paintings dating from the Bauhaus period; and, finally, the full synthesis of all these characteristics, which took place between 1934 and his death in 1944, in the Paris period.”