Kandinsky, Wassily
TIMELINE:
Towards Abstraction
``Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.''
-- Wassily Kandinsky, 1911
Kandinsky, Wassily, Russian in full VASILY VASILYEVICH KANDINSKY
(b. Dec. 4 [Dec. 16, New Style], 1866, Moscow, Russia--d. Dec. 13,
1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Fr.), Russian-born artist, one of the first
creators of pure ab straction in modern painting. After successful
avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der
Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider; 1911-14)
and began completely abstract
painting. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and,
finally, to pictographic ( e.g., Tempered Élan, 1944).
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994]
Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician, once said
``Color 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 vibrations in the soul.''
The concept that color and musical harmony are linked has a long history,
intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used color
in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre (the sound's
character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound.
He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music.
The Kandinsky pages were contributed by
Steven Brock.
See also: Mark
Harden's review of Kandinsky's Compositions
at Atlantis Art reviews.
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Autumn in Bavaria
1908; Oil on cardboard, 33x45cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Improvisation 7
1910 (180 Kb); Oil on canvas, 131 x 97 cm;
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
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Composition IV
1911 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 159.5 x 250.5 cm (62 7/8 x 98 5/8 in);
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Dusseldorf
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Composition V
1911 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 190 x 275 cm (6' 3 7/8" x 9' 1/4");
Private collection
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Black Spot I
1912 (200 Kb); Oil on canvas, 100 x 130 cm;
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
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Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle)
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Ravine Improvisation
1914 (110 Kb); Oil on cardboard, 110 x 110 cm;
Stadtische, Munich
``Ravine'' is so coarse that, intuitively, I feel the title is wrong.
It is the one given, however. And of course, the chaotic bric-à-brac
image of a ravine does mesh with the Kandinsky spirit--so, away with
the intuitive!''
-- Sandro Pasquali
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Composition VI
1913 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 195 x 300 cm (6' 4 3/4" x 10');
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
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Composition VII
1913 (200 Kb); Oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm (6' 6 3/4" x 9' 11 1/8");
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
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Small Pleasures
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Fragment 2 for Composition VII
1913 (180 Kb);
Oil on canvas, 87.5 x 99.5 cm (34 1/2 x 39 1/4 in);
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
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On White II
1923; Oil on canvas, 105 x 98cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Composition VIII
1923 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm (55 1/8 x 79 1/8 in);
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
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Black and Violet
1923
(thanks to Michael
Shephard)
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Contrasting Sounds
1924; Oil on cardboard, 70x49.5cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Yellow, Red, Blue
1925; Oil on canvas, 127x200cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Composition IX
1936 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 113.5 x 195 cm (44 5/8 x 76 3/4 in);
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Composition X
1939 (160 Kb); Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm (51 1/8 x 76 3/4 in);
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
Biography
Born in Moscow in 1866, Kandinsky spent his early childhood in Odessa. His
parents played the piano and the zither and Kandinsky himself learned the
piano and cello at an early age. The influence of music in his paintings
cannot be overstated, down to the names of his paintings
Improvisations,
Impressions, and
Compositions.
In 1886, he enrolled at the University
of Moscow, chose to study law and economics, and after passing his
examinations, lectured at the Moscow Faculty of Law. 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 in
his work. In 1895 Kandinsky attended a French
Impressionist
exhibition
where he saw
Monet's
Haystacks at Giverny.
He stated, "It was from
the catalog 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, Kandinsky'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 he began
exploring his own ideas of painting - "I applied streaks and blobs of
colors onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all
the intensity I could..." Now considered to be the founder of abstract
art, his work was exhibited throughout Europe from 1903 onwards, and often
caused controversy among the public, the art critics, and his
contemporaries. An active participant in several of the most influential
and controversial art movements of the 20th century, among them the Blue
Rider which he founded along with
Franz Marc
and the Bauhaus which also
attracted
Klee,
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), and Schonberg, Kandinsky continued to further
express and define his form of art, both on canvas and in his theoretical
writings. His reputation became firmly established in the United State
s through numerous exhbitions and his work was introduced to Solomon
Guggenheim, who became one of his most enthusiastic supporters.
In 1933, Kandinsky left Germany and settled near Paris, in Neuilly. The
paintings from these later years were again the subject of controversy.
Though out of favor with many of the patriarchs of Paris's artistic
community, younger artists admired Kandinsky. His studio was visited
regularly by
Miro,
Arp, Magnelli and Sophie Tauber.
Kandinsky continued painting almost until his death in June, 1944. 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.
© 1 Jan 1996,
Nicolas Pioch -
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