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Kandinsky’s paintings still attract lovers of abstract art and international museums compete to embrace his timeless works. Currently the Guggenheim Museum hosts an exhibition for the most important works of this Russian artist, a pioneer of abstract art, the show runs through to 15th January.

His Life Before Art

Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4, 1866 in Moscow. From the age of 20 he studied Economy and Law. After graduation, he started work within a company that collected statistics in countryside and rural districts. He completed his mission of preparing the studies and statistics on local farmers and rural life successfully; enabling him to become a member in the administrative body of the company.

This success helped Kandinsky to complete his academic study. In 1892, he successfully and easily passed the final exams of the Faculty of Law. During that period, he met and married Anna Chimyakina, while she was teaching in the external section of the same university.

Impact of Claude Monet

By the end of the 19th century, Kandinsky was faced with two choices: either to work as a Professor, or to pursue a life as an artist.

His discovery of the Parisian Impressionists Exhibition, held in Moscow at that time, provided a significant impact both through a painting by the skilled impressionist, Claude Monet’s ‘Haystacks’ and the music of Wagner at the Russian Empire Theater – these experiences had an important influence on his future life. As a result, he chose to study the arts, when he was 30 years old, and to our good fortune.

Immigration to Munich

Kandinsky immigrated to Munich in 1896, where he studied arts in one of the city’s institutes. At that time, Munich was known for its tendency towards political arts. Kandinsky decided to strengthen his relation with creative arts and defined his concept as being modern art. He painted most of his graphic works and line designs, using “wood printing”, despite the fact that he was, he felt, surrounded by a “conservative, bourgeois and limited” artistic movement.

During those days and through wood printing, he completed the “Singer” painting, with its two colors (in 1903), distinguished with its vertical longitude lines that are similar to the musical note lines. It was the result of his deep belief in the connection between music and drawing.

“Der Blaue Reiter” Movement

By the beginning of 1911, Kandinsky and his friend Franz Marc had established a new art movement called “Der Blau Reiter”, which means “the Blue Rider”. It was named after the painter’s passion in using the blue color in his works, in addition to Marc’s passion for drawing horses and Kandinsky’s passion for drawing horse riders.

This movement has also attracted both Koffa, who drew his paintings in a unique musical impression and Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), a French artist, whose works were distinguished with pure essential colors.

“Der Blaue Reiter” movement emphasized on the interpretation of aestheticism science through the experiments and the studies performed by each of the Russian Kandinsky and the German Marc. These studies and experiments have reached one conclusion, summarized in separating between the aestheticism philosophy and the classic and academic rules and focusing on the inner interest of the artist.

Joined the Bauhaus and Died in France

In 1922, Kandinsky joined the Bauhaus School after the suspension of “Der Blaue Reiter” movement upon the declaration of the First World War in 1914. Ultimately, and after taking French citizenship, he moved to Paris in 1933 seeking to escape from the Nazi Invasion. He died on December 13, 1944 in Neuilly Sur Seine.

Kandinsky’s works were characterized by abstraction, which became the perfect form for expressing the relation between the artist and his surroundings, after the drop of all presuppositions on the principles and values that were inherited in the minds of the human being before the 19th century. This revolutionary vision on the form and content of arts has emerged to express the close relation between human being and nature.

Kandinsky at the Bauhaus is the subject of an ongoing exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim.

First Published in Men's Passion Issue #36 December 2011 - January 2012

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