Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky, c. 1913 or earlier
Birth name	Vassily Vassilyevic Kandinsky
Born	16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 Moscow
Died	13 December 1944(1944-12-13) (aged 77) Neuilly-sur-Seine
Nationality	Russian
Field	Painting
Training	Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Movement	Expressionism; abstract art
Works	On White II, Der Blaue Reiter

Vassily Vassilyevich Kandinsky (/kænˈdɪnski/; Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasiliy Vasil’yevich Kandinskiy, pronounced [vaˈsʲilʲɪj kɐnˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Artistic periods

Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art.

Youth and inspiration (1866–1896)

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant.^[1][2] Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew. In 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region's folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), was reflected in much of his early work. A few years later he first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul".^[3]

In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in art school in Munich. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the impressionistic style of Haystacks; this, to him, had a powerful sense of colour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write about this experience:

“	That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognize it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.[4]	”
	— Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner's Lohengrin which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standard lyricism.^{[citation needed]} He was also spiritually influenced by H. P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theory postulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles and squares. Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual In Art (1910) and Point and Line to Plane (1926) echoed this theosophical tenet. Illustrations by John Varley in Thought Forms (1901) influenced him visually.^[5]

Metamorphosis

Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. The number of his existing paintings increased at the beginning of the 20th century; much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths of colour and recognizable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky's paintings did not feature any human figures; an exception is Sunday, Old Russia (1904), in which Kandinsky recreates a highly colorful (and fanciful) view of peasants and nobles in front of the walls of a town. Riding Couple (1907) depicts a man on horseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russian town with luminous walls across a river. The horse is muted while the leaves in the trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots of colour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism in the way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface. Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to express Kandinsky's experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.

Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider's cloak is medium blue, which casts a darker-blue shadow. In the foreground are more amorphous blue shadows, the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The blue rider in the painting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Some art historians believe ^{[citation needed]} that a second figure (perhaps a child) is being held by the rider, although this may be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction, allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became an increasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; it culminated in the abstract works of the 1911–1914 period. In The Blue Rider, Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colours than in specific detail. This painting is not exceptional in that regard when compared with contemporary painters, but it shows the direction Kandinsky would take only a few years later.

From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow), until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. The Blue Mountain (1908–1909) was painted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain of blue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, with three riders and several others, crosses at the bottom. The faces, clothing, and saddles of the riders are each a single colour, and neither they nor the walking figures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also are indicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of colour in The Blue Mountain illustrates Kandinsky's inclination toward an art in which colour is presented independently of form, and which each colour is given equal attention. The composition is more planar; the painting is divided into four sections: the sky, the red tree, the yellow tree and the blue mountain with the three riders.

Blue Rider Period (1911–1914)

Kandinsky's paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and described more elaborate works as "compositions."

In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on the history of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than from his paintings. He helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artists' Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group could not integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventional artistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed a new group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as August Macke and Franz Marc. The group released an almanac (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia via Switzerland and Sweden.

His writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise "On the Spiritual In Art" (which was released around the same time) were both a defence and promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.

These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in the English-speaking world.^[6] As early as 1912, On the Spiritual In Art was reviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based Art News.^[7] Interest in Kandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of On the Spiritual In Art in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year in Percy Wyndham Lewis's periodical Blast, and Alfred Orage's weekly cultural newspaper The New Age. Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain, however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists' Exhibition (organised by Frank Rutter) at London's Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work being singled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer Frederick Gore in The Art News.^[8]

Sadleir's interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky's first works entering a British art collection; Sadleir's father, Michael Sadler, acquired several woodprints and the abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII in 1913 following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. These works were displayed in Leeds, either in the University or the premises of the Leeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.^[9]

Return to Russia (1914–1921)

“	The sun melts all of Moscow down to a single spot that, like a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this uniformity of red is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of a symphony that takes every colour to the zenith of life that, like the fortissimo of a great orchestra, is both compelled and allowed by Moscow to ring out.	”
	— Wassily Kandinsky[10]

From 1918 to 1921, Kandinsky dealt with the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during this period, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on form and colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow. In 1916 he met Nina Andreievskaya, whom he married the following year. His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by the radical members of the Institute as too individualistic and bourgeois. In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius.

The Bauhaus (1922–1933)

Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The development of his works on forms study, particularly on points and line forms, led to the publication of his second theoretical book (Point and Line to Plane) in 1926. Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised in his works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradations—as in Yellow – red – blue (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from the constructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.

The two-meter-wide Yellow – red – blue (1925) consists of several main forms: a vertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; a multitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromatic circles and scattered, coloured checkerboards contribute to its delicate complexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main coloured masses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality of the work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observation—not only of forms and colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute and relative positions on the canvas and their harmony.

Kandinsky was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), formed in 1923 with Klee, Feininger and von Jawlensky, which lectured and exhibited in the United States in 1924. Due to right-wing hostility, the Bauhaus left Weimar and settled in Dessau in 1925. Following a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany, settling in Paris.

The Great Synthesis (1934–1944)

Living in a small apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-room studio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in his paintings—forms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist's inner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.

This period corresponds to a synthesis of Kandinsky's previous work in which he used all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his two last major compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for many years. Composition IX has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose central form gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours and coloured bands stand out against the black background of Composition X as star fragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover a large maroon mass which seems to float in the upper-left corner of the canvas. In Kandinsky’s work some characteristics are obvious, while certain touches are more discrete and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who deepen their connection with his work.^[11] He intended his forms (which he subtly harmonized and placed) to resonate with the observer's soul.

Kandinsky's conception of art

The artist as prophet

Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher," Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend Gabriele Münter. While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of Composition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky's first three Compositions. They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art", and then destroyed (along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists).

Influenced by theosophy and the perception of a coming New Age, a common theme among Kandinsky's first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it). Writing of the "artist as prophet" in his book, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individual and social reality. Raised an Orthodox Christian, Kandinsky drew upon the Jewish and Christian stories of Noah's Ark, Jonah and the whale, Christ's resurrection, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation, Russian folktales and the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attempting to picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imagery as symbols of the archetypes of death–rebirth and destruction–creation he felt were imminent in the pre-World War I world.

As he stated in Concerning the Spiritual In Art (see below), Kandinsky felt that an authentic artist creating art from "an internal necessity" inhabits the tip of an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating and proceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is commonplace today; what is avant garde today (and understood only by the few) is common knowledge tomorrow. The modern artist–prophet stands alone at the apex of the pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow's reality. Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modern artists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.

Composition IV and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypse by water (Composition VI), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritual communion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limits of words and images.

Artistic and spiritual theoretician

As the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac essays and theorizing with composer Arnold Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that (for example), yellow is the colour of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the colour of closure, and the end of things; and that combinations of colours produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. Kandinsky also developed a theory of geometric figures and their relationships—claiming, for example, that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theories are explained in Point and Line to Plane (see below).

During the studies Kandinsky made in preparation for Composition IV, he became exhausted while working on a painting and went for a walk. While he was out, Gabriele Münter tidied his studio and inadvertently turned his canvas on its side. Upon returning and seeing the canvas (but not yet recognizing it) Kandinsky fell to his knees and wept, saying it was the most beautiful painting he had ever seen. He had been liberated from attachment to an object. As when he first viewed Monet's Haystacks, the experience would change his life.^{[citation needed]}

In another episode with Münter during the Bavarian abstract expressionist years, Kandinsky was working on his Composition VI. From nearly six months of study and preparation, he had intended the work to evoke a flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth simultaneously. After outlining the work on a mural-sized wood panel, he became blocked and could not go on. Münter told him that he was trapped in his intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested he simply repeat the word uberflut ("deluge" or "flood") and focus on its sound rather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky painted and completed the monumental work in a three-day span.^{[citation needed]}

Theoretical writings on art

Kandinsky's analyses on forms and colours result not from simple, arbitrary idea-associations but from the painter's inner experience. He spent years creating abstract, sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observing his own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his sense of colour.^[12] This subjective experience is something that anyone can do—not scientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what French philosopher Michel Henry calls "absolute subjectivity" or the "absolute phenomenological life".^[13]

Concerning the spiritual in art

Published in 1912, Kandinsky's text, Du Spirituel dans l’art, defines three types of painting; impressions, improvisations and compositions. While impressions are based on an external reality that serves as a starting point, improvisations and compositions depict images emergent from the unconscious, though composition is developed from a more formal point of view.^[14] Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid—the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.^[15]

Colours on the painter's palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an "inner resonance"—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.^[16]

"Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul.^[17] Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces on one who looks at it attentively.^[18] This inner necessity is the right of the artist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is not founded on such a necessity.^[19] Art is born from the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breath.^[20]

The obvious properties we can see when we look at an isolated colour and let it act alone; on one side is the warmth or coldness of the colour tone, and on the other side is the clarity or obscurity of that tone.^[21] Warmth is a tendency towards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form the first great, dynamic contrast.^[22] Yellow has an eccentric movement and blue a concentric movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away.^[23] Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whose violence can be painful and aggressive.^[24] Blue is a celestial colour, evoking a deep calm.^[25] The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility and calm, which is green.^[26]

Clarity is a tendency towards white, and obscurity is a tendency towards black. White and black form the second great contrast, which is static.^[23] White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility.^[27] Black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors.^[28] The mixing of white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is near that of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despair when it becomes dark, regaining little hope when it lightens.^[29]

Red is a warm colour, lively and agitated; it is forceful, a movement in itself.^[29] Mixed with black it becomes brown, a hard colour.^[30] Mixed with yellow, it gains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on its surroundings.^[31] When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to become purple, which is a cool red.^[32] Red and green form the third great contrast, and orange and purple the fourth.^[33]

Point and line to plane

In his writings, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting—the point and the line. He called the physical support and the material surface on which the artist draws or paints the basic plane, or BP.^[34] He did not analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect on the observer.^[35]

A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and colour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated or resonate with other points or lines.^[36]

A line is the product of a force which has been applied in a given direction: the force exerted on the pencil or paintbrush by the artist. The produced linear forms may be of several types: a straight line, which results from a unique force applied in a single direction; an angular line, resulting from the alternation of two forces in different directions, or a curved (or wave-like) line, produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. A plane may be obtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).^[37]

The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: a horizontal line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; it possesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. A vertical line corresponds with height, and offers no support; it possesses a luminous, warm tonality close to white and yellow. A diagonal possesses a more-or-less warm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal or the vertical.^[38]

A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces a straight line corresponds with lyricism; several forces which confront (or annoy) each other form a drama.^[39] The angle formed by the angular line also has an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (a triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (a circle), and similar to red for a right angle (a square).^[40]

The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. therefore, it is composed of horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomous entity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. This tonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and vertical lines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while the verticals impart a calm, warm tonality.^[41] The artist intuits the inner effect of the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonality he wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a living being, which the artist "fertilizes" and feels "breathing".^[42]

Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influences the tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, and contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition on the canvas. The above of the basic plane corresponds with looseness and to lightness, while the below evokes condensation and heaviness. The painter's job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings which are not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and the result of an effort towards inner beauty.^[43]

This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky’s works which offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allow the reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes the time to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its own sensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of his soul.^[44]

Quotations

• "The 'Pioneer' [Kandinsky] did not just produce a body of work whose sensuous magnificence and rich inventiveness eclipse even the most remarkable of his contemporaries. He also provided an explicit theory of abstract painting, exposing its principles with the utmost precision and clarity. So, the painted work is accompanied with a group of texts that at the same time clarify his work and make Kandinsky one of the main theorists of art. Facing the hieroglyphs of the last canvases of the Parisian period (which are said to be the most difficult), they provide the Rosetta stone on which the meaning of these mysterious figures is inscribed".^[45]
• "Kandinsky was fascinated by the expressive power of linear forms. Lyricism is the pathos of a force whose triumphant effort enters into action and encounters no obstacle. Because the straight line results from the initiative of a single, unopposed force, its domain is that of the lyric. When two forces are present and thus enter in conflict, as this is the case with the curve or the zigzag line, we are in domain of drama".^[46]
• "Kandinsky calls abstract the content that painting must express, that’s to say this invisible life that we are. In such a way that the Kandinskian equation, to which we have alluded to, can be written in reality as follows : Interior = interiority = invisible = life = pathos = abstract".^[47]
• "Like the final climax of a giant orchestra, Moscow resounds victoriously".^[48]

Art market

External video

1913 "Klänge (Sounds)" by Vasily Kandinsky on YouTube, Museum of Modern Art

Helen Mirren on Vasily Kandinsky on YouTube, Museum of Modern Art

In 2012, Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firm Volkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist's last record was set in 1990 when Sotheby's sold his Fugue (1914) for $20.9 million.^[49]

See also

• Goethe's Theory of Colours
• History of painting
• Kandinsky Prize
• List of Russian artists
• Russian avant-garde
• Wassily Chair
• Western painting

References

Note: Several sections of this article have been translated from its French version: Theoretical writings on art, The Bauhaus and The great synthesis artistic periods. For complete detailed references in French, see the original version at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassily_Kandinsky

Notes

Books by Kandinsky

• Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. Sadler (Translator), Adrian Glew (Editor). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (New York: MFA Publications and London: Tate Publishing, 2001). 192pp. ISBN 0-87846-702-5
• Wassily Kandinsky, M. T Sadler (Translator). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover Publ. (Paperback). 80 pp. ISBN 0-486-23411-8. or: Lightning Source Inc Publ. (Paperback). ISBN 1-4191-1377-1
• Wassily Kandinsky. Klänge. Verlag R. Piper & Co., Munich
• Wassily Kandinsky. Point and Line to Plane. Dover Publications, New York. ISBN 0-486-23808-3
• Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80570-7

References in English

• John E Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton Long. The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian art: a study of "On the spiritual in art" by Wassily Kandinsky. (Newtonville, MA.: Oriental Research Partners, 1984). ISBN 0-89250-131-6
• Magdalena Dabrowski. Kandinsky Compositions. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002). ISBN 0-87070-405-2
• Hajo Düchting. Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944: A Revolution in Painting. (Taschen, 2000). ISBN 3-8228-5982-6
• Hajo Düchting and O'Neill. The Avant-Garde in Russia.
• Will Grohmann. Wassily Kandinsky. Life and Work. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc., 1958).
• Thomas M. Messer. Vasily Kandinsky. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1997). (Illustrated). ISBN 0-8109-1228-7.
• Margarita Tupitsyn, Against Kandinsky (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2006).
• Michel Henry: Seeing the Invisible. On Kandinsky (Continuum, 2009). ISBN 1-84706-447-7
• Julian Lloyd Webber, "Seeing red, looking blue, feeling green", Daily Telegraph 6 July 2006.
• Sabine Flach, "Through the Looking Gass", in: Intellectual Birdhouse (London: Koenig Books, 2012). ISBN 978-3-86335-118-2

References in French

• Michel Henry. Voir l’invisible. Sur Kandinsky (Presses Universitaires de France) ISBN 2-13-053887-8
• Nina Kandinsky. Kandinsky et moi (éd. Flammarion) ISBN 2-08-064013-5
• Jéléna Hahl-Fontaine. Kandinsky (Marc Vokar éditeur) ISBN 2-87012-006-0
• François le Targat. Kandinsky (éd. Albin Michel, les grands maîtres de l’art contemporain) ISBN 2-226-02830-7
• Kandinsky. Rétrospective (Foundation Maeght) ISBN 2-900923-26-3 ISBN 2-900923-27-1
• Kandinsky. Œuvres de Vassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) (Centre Georges Pompidou) ISBN 2-85850-262-5

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wassily Kandinsky.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wassily Kandinsky

• Wassily Kandinsky papers, 1911-1940. The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California.

Writing by Kandinsky

• Works by Wassily Kandinsky at Project Gutenberg
• "Concerning the Spiritual in Art". Guggenheim Internet Archives. Retrieved 25 October 2013. 

Paintings by Kandinsky

• Wassily Kandinsky at the Museum of Modern Art
• Artcyclopedia.com, Wassily Kandinsky at ArtCyclopedia
• Glyphs.com, Kandinsky's compositions with commentary

v t e Der Blaue Reiter Leaders Wassily Kandinsky Franz Marc Artists Albert Bloch David Burliuk Heinrich Campendonk Lyonel Feininger Natalia Goncharova Alexej von Jawlensky Paul Klee August Macke Gabriele Münter Arnold Schoenberg See also Die Brücke Expressionism

v t e Modernism Milestones Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1862-63) Olympia (1863) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886) The Starry Night (1889) Hunger (1890) Ubu Roi (1896) Le bonheur de vivre (1906) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) The Firebird (1910) Afternoon of a Faun (1912) Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) The Metamorphosis (1915) Fountain (1917) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) Ulysses (1922) The Waste Land (1922) The Magic Mountain (1924) Battleship Potemkin (1925) The Sun Also Rises (1926) The Threepenny Opera (1928) Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Un Chien Andalou (1929) The Man Without Qualities (1930) Fallingwater (1936) The Cantos (1915–1969) Literature Guillaume Apollinaire Djuna Barnes Tadeusz Borowski André Breton Hermann Broch Mikhail Bulgakov Ivan Cankar Joseph Conrad E. M. Forster Alfred Döblin William Faulkner André Gide Knut Hamsun Jaroslav Hašek Ernest Hemingway Hermann Hesse James Joyce Franz Kafka D. H. Lawrence Primo Levi Wyndham Lewis Thomas Mann Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Robert Musil Oulipo Katherine Anne Porter Marcel Proust Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Gertrude Stein Italo Svevo Dorothy Richardson Oscar Wilde Virginia Woolf Poetry Anna Akhmatova W. H. Auden Charles Baudelaire Luca Caragiale Constantine P. Cavafy Aimé Césaire Hart Crane H.D. Robert Desnos T. S. Eliot Paul Éluard Stefan George Max Jacob Federico García Lorca Amy Lowell Mina Loy Stéphane Mallarmé Ion Minulescu Marianne Moore Fernando Pessoa Pablo Picasso Ezra Pound Rainer Maria Rilke Arthur Rimbaud Wallace Stevens Alfonsina Storni Dylan Thomas Tristan Tzara Paul Valéry William Carlos Williams W. B. Yeats Visual art Josef Albers Alexander Archipenko Jean Arp Giacomo Balla Balthus George Bellows Umberto Boccioni Pierre Bonnard Antoine Bourdelle Georges Braque Constantin Brâncuși Alexander Calder Anthony Caro Mary Cassatt Paul Cézanne Marc Chagall Giorgio de Chirico Camille Claudel Joseph Cornell Joseph Csaky Salvador Dalí Stuart Davis Edgar Degas Willem de Kooning Robert Delaunay André Derain Otto Dix Marcel Duchamp Raoul Dufy James Ensor Jacob Epstein Max Ernst Henri Le Fauconnier Lyonel Feininger Lucio Fontana Paul Gauguin Alberto Giacometti Albert Gleizes Vincent van Gogh Arshile Gorky Juan Gris George Grosz Hannah Höch Hans Hofmann Edward Hopper Alexej von Jawlensky Jasper Johns Frida Kahlo Wassily Kandinsky Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Paul Klee Käthe Kollwitz Oskar Kokoschka Alfred Kubin František Kupka Fernand Léger El Lissitzky René Magritte Kazimir Malevich Édouard Manet André Masson Henri Matisse Jean Metzinger Joan Miró Amedeo Modigliani László Moholy-Nagy Piet Mondrian Claude Monet Henry Moore Giorgio Morandi Gustave Moreau Berthe Morisot Barnett Newman Isamu Noguchi Emil Nolde Georgia O'Keeffe Méret Oppenheim Francis Picabia Pablo Picasso Camille Pissarro Jackson Pollock Maurice Prendergast Robert Rauschenberg Man Ray Odilon Redon Oubapo Pierre-Auguste Renoir Diego Rivera Alexander Rodchenko Mark Rothko Henri Rousseau August Sander Christian Schad Egon Schiele Oskar Schlemmer Kurt Schwitters Georges Seurat Gino Severini Alfred Sisley David Smith Edward Steichen Frank Stella Alfred Stieglitz Clyfford Still Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Édouard Vuillard Andy Warhol Max Weber Weegee Grant Wood Andrew Wyeth Music George Antheil Milton Babbitt Jean Barraqué Béla Bartók Alban Berg Luciano Berio Pierre Boulez John Cage Aaron Copland Henry Cowell Claude Debussy Henri Dutilleux Morton Feldman Lou Harrison Paul Hindemith Arthur Honegger Charles Ives Leoš Janáček György Ligeti Witold Lutoslawski Gustav Mahler Luigi Nono Arvo Pärt Harry Partch Krzysztof Penderecki Sergei Prokofiev Luigi Russolo Erik Satie Pierre Schaeffer Arnold Schoenberg Dmitri Shostakovich Jean Sibelius Karlheinz Stockhausen Richard Strauss Igor Stravinsky Edgard Varèse Anton Webern Kurt Weill Iannis Xenakis Theatre Edward Albee Maxwell Anderson Jean Anouilh Antonin Artaud Samuel Beckett Bertolt Brecht Anton Chekhov Friedrich Dürrenmatt Jean Genet Susan Glaspell Maxim Gorky Henrik Ibsen William Inge Eugène Ionesco Alfred Jarry Maurice Maeterlinck Arthur Miller Seán O'Casey Eugene O'Neill John Osborne Luigi Pirandello Erwin Piscator Romain Rolland George Bernard Shaw August Strindberg John Millington Synge Frank Wedekind Thornton Wilder Tennessee Williams Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz Film Ingmar Bergman Anton Giulio Bragaglia Luis Buñuel Marcel Carné Charles Chaplin René Clair Jean Cocteau Maya Deren Alexander Dovzhenko Carl Theodor Dreyer Germaine Dulac Viking Eggeling Sergei Eisenstein Jean Epstein Jacques Feyder Robert Flaherty Abel Gance Buster Keaton Lev Kuleshov Fritz Lang Marcel L'Herbier Georges Méliès F. W. Murnau Georg Wilhelm Pabst Michael Powell Vsevolod Pudovkin Jean Renoir Hans Richter Walter Ruttmann Victor Sjöström Josef von Sternberg Dziga Vertov Jean Vigo Orson Welles Robert Wiene Dance George Balanchine Merce Cunningham Sergei Diaghilev Isadora Duncan Martha Graham Hanya Holm Doris Humphrey Léonide Massine Vaslav Nijinsky Alwin Nikolais Ted Shawn Anna Sokolow Ruth St. Denis Helen Tamiris Charles Weidman Mary Wigman Architecture Alvar Aalto Marcel Breuer Gordon Bunshaft Charles and Ray Eames Antoni Gaudí Walter Gropius Hector Guimard Raymond Hood Victor Horta Philip Johnson Louis Kahn Fazlur Khan Le Corbusier Adolf Loos Konstantin Melnikov Erich Mendelsohn Pier Luigi Nervi Richard Neutra Oscar Niemeyer Hans Poelzig Gerrit Rietveld Eero Saarinen Rudolf Steiner Edward Durell Stone Louis Sullivan Vladimir Tatlin Paul Troost Jørn Utzon William Van Alen Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Frank Lloyd Wright Minoru Yamasaki Related articles Abstract expressionism American modernism Armory Show Art Deco Art Nouveau Ashcan School Avant-garde Bauhaus Color Field Constructivism Cubism Dada De Stijl Der Blaue Reiter Die Brücke Electronic music Experimental film Experimental music Expressionism Expressionist music Fauvism Fluxus Fourth dimension in art Fourth dimension in literature Futurism Futurism (music) Generación del 27 Impressionism Impressionist cinema International Style History Kallol Late modernism Late modernity Lettrism List of art movements List of avant-garde artists List of modernist poets Lyrical Abstraction Minimalism Minimalism (visual arts) Modern art Modernity Neo-Dada Neo-primitivism New Objectivity Orphism Poetry in English Post-Impressionism Postminimalism Postmodern art Postmodernism Reactionary modernism Remodernism Romanticism Second Viennese School Structural film Surrealism Symbolism Synchromism Tonalism

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 22143802 LCCN: n79059310 GND: 118559737 BNF: cb11909375r ULAN: 500021093 NDL: 00445112 NKC: jn19981001602

Persondata
Name	Kandinsky, Wassily
Alternative names
Short description	Russian painter
Date of birth	16 December 1866
Place of birth	Moscow
Date of death	13 December 1944
Place of death	Neuilly-sur-Seine