Painting. Russian artists. Vassily Kandinsky

Vassily Kandinsky is regarded by many art historians as the abstract painter, and therefore the father of Modern art. Vassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow and spent his childhood in Odessa. But his interest in the music and fairy-tales which inspired his paintings, such as Musical Overture, Violet Wedge, was the legacy of his Russian upbringing. His parents played the piano and the zither, Kandinsky learned the piano and cello at an early age. The influence of music on his paintings was great, down to their names Improvisation, Impressions, and Compositions. When he published his book On the Spiritual in Art (1912), the first justification of abstraction in painting, he dedicated it to his aunt Elisabeth, to whom he owed his introduction as a child to Russian folk culture.
In 1886, Kandinsky enrolled at Moscow University. He chose the study of law and after passing his examinations, lectured in the Law Faculty. He enjoyed success not only as a teacher but also wrote extensively on spirituality, a subject that remained of great interest and ultimately exerted substantial influence on his work. In 1895 Kandinsky attended a French Impressionist exhibition where he saw Monet's Haystacks at Giverny. He stated, "It was from the catalogue I learned this was a haystack. I was upset I had not recognized it. I also thought the painter had no right to paint in such an imprecise fashion. Dimly I was aware too that the object did not appear in the picture..." Soon thereafter, at the age of thirty, Kandinsky left Moscow and went to Munich to study life-drawing, sketching and anatomy, regarded then as basic for an artistic education.

Ironically, Kahdinsky's work moved in a direction that was of much greater abstraction than that which was pioneered by the Impressionists. It was not long before his talent surpassed the constraints of art school and began exploring his own ideas of painting - "I applied streaks and blobs of colour onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could..." Now considered the founder of abstract art, his work was exhibited throughout Europe from 1903 onwards, and often produced debates among public, art critics and his contemporaries.

After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group The Blue Rider (1911-14) and began completely abstract painting. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and finally, to pictographic. Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician, once said, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibration in the soul". The idea that colour and musical harmony are linked has a long history, intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used colour in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timber (the sound's character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound. He even claimed that when he saw colour he heard music.

An active participant of some of the most influential and controversial art movements of the twentieth century, Kandinsky continued to explore and define his form of art, both on canvas and in his theoretical writings. His reputation became firmly established in the United States through numerous exhibitions.

In 1933, Kandinsky left Germany and settled near Paris, at Neuilly. The paintings from these later years were again the subject of controversy. Out of favour with many of the patriarchs of Paris's artistic community, younger artist admired Kandinsky. His studio was visited regularly by Miro, Arp, Magnelli and Sophie Tauber.
Kandinsky continued painting almost up to his death. His unrelenting quest for new forms which carried him to the very extremes of geometric abstraction have provided us with an unparalleled collection of abstract art.
 

Literature: Book "Russian art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva