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Wassily Kandinsky

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Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky, c. 1913 or earlierBorn Vassily Vassilyevich Kandinsky16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866Moscow, Russian EmpireDied 13 December 1944 (aged 77)Neuilly-sur-Seine, FranceNationality RussianEducation Academy of Fine Arts, MunichKnown for PaintingNotable work(s) On White II, Der Blaue ReiterMovement Expressionism; abstract art

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (/kndnski/; Russian: , Vasiliy Vasil'yevich Kandinskiy, pronounced [vasilj kndinskj];16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 13 December 1944) was an influentialRussian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purelyabstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He

enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful inhis profession he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at theUniversity of Dorpat he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching andanatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Abe

s privateschool 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 officialtheories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, hetaught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazisclosed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of hislife, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent

art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.Contents [hide]

1 Artistic periods

1.1 Youth and inspiration (18661896)

1.2 Metamorphosis

1.3 Blue Rider Period (19111914)

1.4 Return to Russia (19141921)

1.5 The Bauhaus (19221933)

1.6 The Great Synthesis (19341944)

2 Kandinsky s conception of art

2.1 The artist as prophet

2.2 Artistic and spiritual theorist


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3 Theoretical writings on art

3.1 Concerning the spiritual in art

3.2 Point and line to plane

4 Art market

5 See also

6 References

6.1 Notes

6.2 Books by Kandinsky

6.3 References in English

6.4 References in French

7 External links

Artistic periods

Der Blaue Reiter (1903)

Kandinsky

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

Youth and inspiration (18661896)

Early-period work, Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula (1908)

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily SilvestrovichKandinsky, a tea merchant.[1][2] Kandinsky learned from a variety of sourceswhile in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law andeconomics. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated bycolour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychologycontinued as he grew. In 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research groupwhich travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, herelates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering coloursthat upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. Thisexperience, and his study of the region

s folk art (particularly the use ofbright 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 forwhich he would become noted, writing, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are thehammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand whichplays, 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 andeconomics to enroll in art school in Munich. He was not immediately grantedadmission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving


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Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken withthe impressionistic style of Haystacks; this, to him, had a powerful sense ofcolour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write aboutthis 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 noright to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting wasmissing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not onlygripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on afairy-tale power and splendour.[4] Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner

sLohengrin which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standardlyricism.[citation needed] He was also spiritually influenced by H. P. Blavatsky(18311891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theorypostulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a singlepoint. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series ofcircles, 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

Wassily Kandinsky, 1908, Murnau, Dorfstrasse (Street in Murnau, A Village Street),oil on cardboard, later mounted on wood panel, 48 x 69.5 cm, The Merzbachercollection, Switzerland.

Wassily Kandinsky, 1911, Reiter (Lyrishes), oil on canvas, 94 x 130 cm, MuseumBoijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Wassily Kandinsky, 1912, Landscape With Two Poplars, 78.8 x 100.4 cm, Art

Institute of Chicago.Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was duringthis time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. Thenumber of his existing paintings increased at the beginning of the 20th century;much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths ofcolour and recognizable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky

s paintingsdid not feature any human figures; an exception is Sunday, Old Russia (1904), inwhich Kandinsky recreates a highly colourful (and fanciful) view of peasants and

nobles in front of the walls of a town. Riding Couple (1907) depicts a man onhorseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russiantown with luminous walls across a river. The horse is muted while the leaves inthe trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots ofcolour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism inthe way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface.Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to expressKandinsky s experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.

Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s


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was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speedinghorse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider

s cloak is medium blue, whichcasts 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 thepainting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnaturalgait (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 thismay be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction,allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became anincreasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; itculminated in the abstract works of the 19111914 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 contemporarypainters, 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 hesettled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. The Blue Mountain (19081909) waspainted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain ofblue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, withthree 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 walkingfigures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also areindicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of colour in The Blue Mountainillustrates Kandinsky

s inclination toward an art in which colour is presentedindependently of form, and which each colour is given equal attention. Thecomposition 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 (19111914)

See also: Der Blaue ReiterKandinsky s paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured massesevaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimitthem, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music wasimportant to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by natureitdoes not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate waythe inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms toidentify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations"and described more elaborate works as "compositions."

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), 1912, oil on canvas, 47

3/8 x 55 1/4 in. (120.3 x 140.3 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show.

In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on thehistory of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than fromhis paintings. He helped found the Neue Knstlervereinigung Mnchen (Munich NewArtists

Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group couldnot integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventionalartistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed anew group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as


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August Macke and Franz Marc. The group released an almanac (The Blue RiderAlmanac) and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia viaSwitzerland and Sweden.

His writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise "On the Spiritual In Art"(which was released in 1910) were both a defence and promotion of abstract artand an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching alevel of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting assomething autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or otherform.

These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in theEnglish-speaking world.[6] As early as 1912, On the Spiritual In Art wasreviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based Art News.[7] Interest inKandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of On theSpiritual In Art in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year inPercy Wyndham Lewis s periodical Blast, and Alfred Orage s weekly culturalnewspaper The New Age. Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain,however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists Exhibition (organisedby Frank Rutter) at London

s Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work beingsingled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer FrederickGore in The Art News.[8]

Sadleir

s interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky

s first works entering aBritish art collection; Sadleir s father, Michael Sadler, acquired severalwoodprints and the abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII in 1913following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. Theseworks were displayed in Leeds, either in the University or the premises of theLeeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.[9]

Return to Russia (19141921) 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 uniformityof 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 agreat 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 andcollaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during thisperiod, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on formand colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culturein Moscow. In 1916 he met Nina Andreievskaya, whom he married the following year.His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by theradical 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 (19221933)

On White II (1923)

Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advancedtheory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop inwhich he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The


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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 teachingand paintingparticularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines andcurves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised inhis works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradationsas in Yellow red blue (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from theconstructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.

The two-meter-wide Yellow red blue (1925) consists of several main forms: avertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; amultitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromaticcircles and scattered, coloured checkerboards contribute to its delicatecomplexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main colouredmasses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality ofthe work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observationnot only of formsand colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute andrelative 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 Statesin 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 1932for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany,settling in Paris.

The Great Synthesis (19341944)

Composition X (1939)

Living in an apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-roomstudio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in hispaintingsforms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist sinner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popularart. 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 heused all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his two lastmajor compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for manyyears. Composition IX has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose centralform gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours andcoloured bands stand out against the black background of Composition X as starfragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover alarge 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 aremore discrete and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who

deepen their connection with his work.[11] He intended his forms (which hesubtly harmonized and placed) to resonate with the observer

s soul.

Kandinsky s conception of artThis section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve thissection by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may bechallenged and removed. (July 2013)

The artist as prophet


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Composition VIIaccording to Kandinsky, the most complex piece he ever painted (1913)

Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher,"[citation needed] Kandinskyembarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three surviveonly in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend GabrieleMnter. While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly ofComposition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in theconfiscation of Kandinsky

s first three Compositions. They were displayed in theState-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art", and then destroyed (along with worksby Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists).

Influenced by theosophy and the perception of a coming New Age, a common themeamong Kandinsky

s first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of theworld as we know it). Writing of the "artist as prophet" in his book, Concerningthe Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediatelypreceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individualand social reality. Raised an Orthodox Christian, Kandinsky drew upon the Jewishand 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 folktalesand the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attemptingto picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imageryas symbols of the archetypes of deathrebirth and destructioncreation he feltwere imminent in the pre-World War I world.

As he stated in Concerning the Spiritual In Art (see below), Kandinsky felt thatan authentic artist creating art from "an internal necessity" inhabits the tipof an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating andproceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is

commonplace today; what is avant garde today (and understood only by the few) iscommon knowledge tomorrow. The modern artistprophet stands alone at the apex ofthe pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow

s reality.Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modernartists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing theworld.

Composition IV and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking aspiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypseby water (Composition VI), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of

experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (witha sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritualcommunion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limitsof words and images.

Artistic and spiritual theorist

Composition VI (1913)

As the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac essays and theorizing with composer Arnold


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Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist andviewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearingtones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that (for example), yellowis 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 vibrationalfrequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. Kandinsky also developed a theoryof geometric figures and their relationshipsclaiming, for example, that thecircle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theoriesare explained in Point and Line to Plane (see below).

During the studies Kandinsky made in preparation for Composition IV, he becameexhausted while working on a painting and went for a walk. While he was out,Gabriele Mnter tidied his studio and inadvertently turned his canvas on itsside. Upon returning and seeing the canvas (but not yet recognizing it)Kandinsky fell to his knees and wept, saying it was the most beautiful paintinghe had ever seen. He had been liberated from attachment to an object. As when hefirst viewed Monet

s Haystacks, the experience would change his life.[citation needed]

In another episode with Mnter 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. Mnter told him that he was trapped inhis intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested hesimply repeat the word uberflut ("deluge" or "flood") and focus on its soundrather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky paintedand 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-associationsbut from the painter s inner experience. He spent years creating abstract,sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observinghis own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his senseof colour.[12] This subjective experience is something that anyone can donotscientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what Frenchphilosopher Michel Henry calls "absolute subjectivity" or the "absolutephenomenological 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. Whileimpressions 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] Kandinskycompares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramidthe artist has a mission tolead 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 ifit sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the


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bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoringspiritual forces.[15]

Colours on the painter s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effecton the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyfulimpression 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 inwhich the colour touches the soul itself.[16]

"Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation offorms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficientcontact of the form with the human soul.[17] Every form is the delimitation of asurface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces onone who looks at it attentively.[18] This inner necessity is the right of theartist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is notfounded on such a necessity.[19] Art is born from the inner necessity of theartist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomouslife; 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 itact 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 tendencytowards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form thefirst great, dynamic contrast.[22] Yellow has an eccentric movement and blue aconcentric movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a bluesurface seems to move away.[23] Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whoseviolence can be painful and aggressive.[24] Blue is a celestial colour, evokinga deep calm.[25] The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility andcalm, 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 adeep, absolute silence, full of possibility.[27] Black is nothingness withoutpossibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any

other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors.[28] The mixing of white withblack leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is nearthat of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despairwhen 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, itgains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on itssurroundings.[31] When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to becomepurple, 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

Points, 1920, 110.3 91.8 cm, Ohara Museum of Art

In his writings, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up everypaintingthe point and the line. He called the physical support and the materialsurface on which the artist draws or paints the basic plane, or BP.[34] He didnot analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect


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on the observer.[35]

A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neithera geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form andcolour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or somethingmore complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placementon the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated orresonate 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 linearforms may be of several types: a straight line, which results from a uniqueforce applied in a single direction; an angular line, resulting from thealternation 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 beobtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).[37]

The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: ahorizontal line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; itpossesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. Avertical 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-lesswarm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal orthe vertical.[38]

A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces astraight 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 aninner 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 fora right angle (a square).[40]

The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. therefore, it is composedof horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomousentity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. Thistonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and verticallines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while theverticals impart a calm, warm tonality.[41] The artist intuits the inner effectof the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonalityhe wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a livingbeing, which the artist "fertilizes" and feels "breathing".[42]

Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influencesthe tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, andcontributes to the richness of the composition resulting from theirjuxtaposition on the canvas. The above of the basic plane corresponds withlooseness and to lightness, while the below evokes condensation and heaviness.The painter s job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings whichare not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and


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the result of an effort towards inner beauty.[43]

This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky's workswhich offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allowthe reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes thetime to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its ownsensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of hissoul.[44]

Art market

In 2012, Christie s auctioned Kandinsky s Studie fr Improvisation 8 (Study forImprovisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-huedvillage, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the KunstmuseumWinterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by theVolkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firmVolkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist

s last record was set in 1990when Sotheby s sold his Fugue (1914) for $20.9 million.[45]

See also

Goethe s Theory of Colours

History of paintingKandinsky Prize

List of Russian artists

Russian avant-garde

Wassily Chair

Western painting

References

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

Notes

1.

Jump up^ "Wassily Kandinsky". Kirjasto.sci.fi. 1944-12-13. Retrieved 2013-06-04.

2.

Jump up^ Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944: a Revolution in Painting. Books.google.ca. 2000.ISBN 9783822859827. Retrieved 2013-06-04.

3.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Wassily (1911). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. translated by


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Jump up^ Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 27

14.

Jump up^ Centre Pompidou, Dossiers pdagogiques - Collections du Muse

15.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 61-75

16.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, pp. 105-107

17.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 112 et 118

18.Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 118

19.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 199

20.

Jump up

^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 19721.


22.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 142-143

23.^

Jump up to:a b Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 143

24.


25.


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Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, pp. 149-150

26.


art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 150-154

27.


28.


art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 156

29.^

Jump up to:a b Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 157

30.Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 160

31.


32.

Jump up

^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l

art, d. Denol, 1989, pp. 162-16333.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l art, d. Denol, 1989, pp. 163-164

34.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, p. 143

35.


art, d. Denol, 1989, p. 45 : "Les ides queje dveloppe ici sont le rsultat d observations et d expriences intrieures" c est--epurement subjectives. Cela vaut galement pour Point et ligne sur plan qui enest "le dveloppement organique" (avant-propos de la premire dition, d.Gallimard, 1991, p. 9).

36.


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Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, p. 25-63

37.


38.


39.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, pp. 80-82

40.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, p. 89

41.Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, p. 143-145

42.


43.

Jump up

^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, p. 146-15144.

Jump up^ Kandinsky, Point et ligne sur plan, d. Gallimard, 1991, Appendice, p. 185-235

45.

Jump up^ Kelly Crow (November 7, 2012), Christie s Sells Monet for $43.8 Million WallStreet Journal.

Books by Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. Sadler (Translator), Adrian Glew (Editor). Concerningthe 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 IncPubl. (Paperback). ISBN 1-4191-1377-1


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Wassily Kandinsky. Klnge. 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 inRussian 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 Dchting. Wassily Kandinsky 18661944: A Revolution in Painting. (Taschen,2000). ISBN 3-8228-5982-6

Hajo Dchting 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 (d. Flammarion) ISBN 2-08-064013-5

Jlna Hahl-Fontaine. Kandinsky (Marc Vokar diteur) ISBN 2-87012-006-0

Franois le Targat. Kandinsky (d. Albin Michel, les grands matres de l'artcontemporain) ISBN 2-226-02830-7

Kandinsky. Rtrospective (Foundation Maeght) ISBN 2-900923-26-3 ISBN 2-900923-27-1

Kandinsky. uvres de Vassily Kandinsky (18661944) (Centre Georges Pompidou)ISBN 2-85850-262-5


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External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Wassily Kandinsky.Wikiquote has 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 October2013.

Paintings by Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky at the Museum of Modern Art

Artcyclopedia.com, Wassily Kandinsky at ArtCyclopedia

Glyphs.com, Kandinsky

s compositions with commentary[show] v t e

Der Blaue Reiter[show] v t e ModernismAuthority control WorldCat VIAF: 22143802 LCCN: n79059310 GND: 118559737 BNF: c11909375r (data) ULAN: 500021093 NDL: 00445112 NKC: jn19981001602

Categories: Wassily Kandinsky1866 births1944 deathsAcademy of Fine Arts, MunichalumniBauhausEastern Orthodox Christians from RussiaRussian ExpressionistpaintersFrench people of Russian descentModern artistsModern paintersMoscowState University alumniPeople from MoscowRussian artistsRussian avant-gardeRussianOrthodox ChristiansRussian paintersRussian printmakersRussian watercoloristsWhite

Russian emigrantsWhite Russian emigrants to GermanyWhite Russian emigrants toFranceWhite Russians (movement)

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