WASSILY KANDINSKY

Early Years

Kandinsky was born in Moscow to an upper-class family who surrounded him with music and folk art during his childhood spent in Odessa. He took piano and cello lessons and learned to draw from the age of five—dramatically developing his sensibilities to colour and sound from an early age.

Still, he would not commit to painting for another 25 years, answering his family's expectation that he study law at the University of Moscow. Despite joining the Moscow Faculty of Law after completing his degree in 1892, his secret management of an art-printing workshop revealed an unresolved tension between academia and creative expression.

Two experiences in 1895 awakened Kandinsky's belief in art's spiritual power: his encounter with Claude Monet's Haystacks at Giverny (1886), which revealed colour's abstract potential, and a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre, whose transcendent emotional intensity solidified his abrupt shift to art.

Seized by the gravity of this revelation, Kandinsky chose to abandon his career in law and study traditional painting at the Munich Academy of Arts. In Munich, Kandinsky's style evolved as he developed his pioneering theories linking music and colour. This intellectual pursuit culminated in 1901 with his co-founding of the Phalanx school, an avant-garde 'laboratory' where he defied artistic conservatism with his spiritually charged abstractions.

Wassily Kandinsky Artworks

Kandinsky's art distinguished itself as one of the first examples of pure abstraction, abandoning representational forms entirely in favour of a spiritually charged visual language. His paintings translated music's emotional cadence into an interplay of electrifying colour fields and rhythmically arranged shapes.

Early development

Rooted in the avant-garde source of his formative Munich years, Kandinsky's practice between 1903–1909 blossomed into greater abstraction. During this period, Kandinsky painted Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) (1903), the painting depicts a lone rider clad in a blue cloak galloping across a sun-dappled meadow – a symbol that he would repeat in his art throughout his career as an expression of resistance against artistic conventions. The painting also marked a shift in technique, to thick, gestural brushstrokes that evoked movement, abandoning strict representation.

Munich

In 1909, Kandinsky co-founded the New Artists Association of Munich (NKVM) to support works labelled as 'radical' by conservative institutions. However, in 1911, when the group's jury rejected his painting Der Blaue Reiter for their annual exhibition, Kandinsky along with his fellow painter Franz Marc broke away to form their own collective under the same name, Der Blaue Reiter. They transformed their exclusion into a manifesto for radical artistic and spiritual experimentation.

Within the experimental spirit of Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky embraced unprecedented artistic liberty, producing seminal works like Composition VII (1913).

Constructivism

After the outbreak of World War I, Der Blaue Reiter disbanded and Kandinsky left Germany to return to Russia, ending his relationship with German Expressionism. In Moscow he was influenced by Constructivism, his style evolved to incorporate geometric forms and sharper lines, producing works like White Line (1920).

Following the October Revolution of 1917, Kandinsky turned to the administration of educational programs and helped establish Moscow's Institute of Artistic Culture and Museum of Pictorial Culture. His administrative work in Russia however was short-lived, his style clashed with the preferred state-approved art. This period highlighted his belief in art's transformative power, even as political realities forced his departure.

Bauhaus

When in 1921 Walter Gropius invited Kandinsky to teach at the Weimar Bauhaus in Germany, he gladly accepted.

Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus school in Berlin until the Nazi takeover in 1933. There, he reflected on the significance of geometric elements within painting, resulting in increasingly abstract works like Composition VIII (1923), in which figures, lines, and planes melt into a horizon of blue.

Final years in Paris

Kandinsky fled to Paris in the late 1930s, where he would spend the final decade of his life. His late style incorporated softer colour nuances and introduced elements inspired by microscopic organisms, creating what he called 'a picturesque fairy tale', seen in paintings like Rigide et Courbé (1935) and Composition IX (1936). Despite remaining remarkably productive during this period, Kandinsky's works were alienated by the Parisian avant-garde, whose focus had shifted to Cubist and Surrealist imagery.

When Germany invaded France in 1940, Kandinsky left for the Pyrenees and then for Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he lived in seclusion, depressed that his paintings were not selling.

Kandinsky passed away in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944, leaving behind a revolutionary legacy from a career that spanned nearly five decades.

Due to the efforts of supporters like Solomon R. Guggenheim during his lifetime, his art would profoundly influence the development of expressionism throughout the 20th century and beyond.

Exhibitions

Wassily Kandinsky has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions at important institutions.

Solo Exhibitions

• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York – Kandinsky, 2009–2010 and Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle, 2021–2022.
• Tate Modern, London - Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction, 2006.
• Centre Pompidou, Paris – Kandinsky, 2009.
• Milwaukee Art Museum - Kandinsky: A Retrospective, 2014.

Group Exhibitions

• Tate Modern, London - Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, 2024.
• Lenbachhaus, Munich - The Blue Rider: A New Language, 2024–2025.
• National Museum, Oslo - Kandinsky and Rothko: Abstract Dialogues, 2024.
• Hermitage, Amsterdam - Russian Avant-Garde, Revolution in the Arts, 2022.
• Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin - Kandinsky and the Bauhaus, 2024.

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