Art Gallery of New South Wales to Show Kandinsky Blockbuster

Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, Russia Follow +

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) will exhibit over 50 works by Russian modernist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) over the southern hemisphere summer.

The exhibition Kandinsky will open on 4 November 2023 and continue through 10 March 2024.

It is curated by Megan Fontanella, curator of modern art and provenance at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she presented the exhibition Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle exhibition from 2021 to 2022.

‘To be able to show these spectacular works, most for the first time in Australia, is a great privilege and my thanks go to our colleagues in New York at the Guggenheim for their close collaboration,’ said AGNSW director Michael Brand.

Among the highlights of the show is the oil on canvas painting Composition 8 (1923), a cacophony of checkers and geometric shapes on a pastel background.

Solomon and Irene Guggenheim purchased the work on a visit to Kandinsky’s studio in Dessau, Germany, in 1929. It was the first of more than 150 works by the artist to enter the Guggenheim collection.

Kandinsky was among the earliest artists to paint what we now consider abstract art. His parents instilled in him a love of music that informed his painting, which at times suggests strings, keys, and the notations used in sheet music.

‘Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings,’ he said in 1911. ‘The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul.’ —[O]

Main image: Wassily Kandinsky, Composition 8 (July 1923). Oil on canvas. 140.3 x 200.7 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, by gift. Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.