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The Biography

Moscow, 1866-1896

Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 16th (4th Old Style), 1866 in Moscow, into a well-to-do family of a businessman, raised in a culturally rich environment. In 1871 the family moved to Odessa where his father ran his tea factory. There, in addition to attending a classical grammar school, the boy learned to play the piano and the cello and took drawing lessons with a tutor. "I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of reality", he wrote later. In Kandinsky's works of his childhood period we can find rather specific color combinations, which he explained by the fact that "each color lives by its mysterious life".

However, Wassily's parents saw him as a future lawyer. In 1886, he went to Moscow and entered the Law Faculty of Moscow University. He graduated with honors. In 1892, he married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina. The following year, he became a docent (associate professor) at the Law Faculty and continued teaching. In 1896, Kandinsky was offered a professorship in law at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia), where russification was underway. Instead, the thirty-year-old Kandinsky decided to give up a successful career to devote himself completely to painting. He later recalled two events that influenced this decision: the emotional shock he experienced from Monet's "Haystacks" at an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow in 1895, and the impression of Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Munich, 1896-1911

In 1896, he left for Munich, at that time considered one of the centers of European art, and entered the prestigious private painting school of Anton Azbe (a Yugoslavian artist), where he acquired his initial skills in composition, line, and form. Before long, however, the school ceased to satisfy his needs. Later, the artist would write, "Quite often I yielded to a temptation to play truant and to go with a painter's case to Shvabing, to Englishen-Garten, or to the parks on the Isar". In 1900, after failing the previous year's entrance exam, Kandinsky entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and studied under Franz Stuck, often called Germany's foremost graphic artist. The master was happy with his student but considered his palette too bright. To meet his teacher's requirements, Kandinsky drew exclusively in black and white for an entire year, "studying form as such."

During that period, Kandinsky met a young artist, Gabriele Münter, and soon divorced his wife, Anna Chimyakina. Over the following five years, he and Gabriele travelled across Europe, painting and participating in exhibitions. After returning to Bavaria, they settled in the small town of Murnau at the foot of the Alps. This marked the beginning of an intense and fruitful period of artistic exploration. The works of those years were primarily landscapes based on color dissonances. The interplay of color patches and lines gradually displaced representational images (Akhtyrka. Autumn. A Sketch, 1901; Sluice, 1901; Old Town, 1902; Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter), 1903; Murnau: The Castle, 1908). At that very time, he turned to Russian fairy tales and epic legends, creating captivating images (Russian Knight, 1902) and bringing mysterious legends of Slavic wooden cities to life (Russian Village on the River with Small Boats, ca. 1902; To the City, ca. 1903).

"Blue Rider", 1911-1914

Thanks to his active creativity and organizational skills, Kandinsky always attracted the intellectual, restless, and striving figures of the art world. In 1901, he founded an art group called Phalanx in Munich and started a school where he himself taught. Over four years, Kandinsky organized twelve exhibitions of the Phalanx members. In 1909, together with Jawlensky, Kanoldt, Kulbin, Münter, and others, he co-founded the New Group of Artists (Neue Künstlervereinigung München, or NKVM) and became its president. The group's creed was: "Each participant not only knows how to express himself but also has something to express." In 1900, Kandinsky participated in exhibitions of the Moscow Fellowship of Artists, and in 1910 and 1912, in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group. He also published his critical "Letters from Munich" in the magazines World of Art and Apollo (1902, 1909). In 1911, Kandinsky, together with his friend Franz Marc, established a group called the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter). According to Kandinsky, "the emphasis was placed on revealing the associative properties of color, line, and composition." They drew on various sources, including the romantic color theories of Goethe and Philipp Runge, Jugendstil, and the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

The French critic Michel Conil-Lacoste observed that Kandinsky's art evolved more rapidly during his Munich years than at any other time. Although his early works featured Biedermeier motifs like fans, crinolines, and horsemen, with no hint of the radical abstraction to come, Kandinsky needed to first explore his own expressive possibilities. Conil-Lacoste finds it remarkable that the artist who painted the relatively conventional Evening (1904 - 1905) could, within five or six years, create the first abstract work (1910). The evolution from 1908 to 1914 was astonishing: from landscapes still rooted in nature, such as Houses in Murnau on Obermarkt, to the chaotic Gorge (1914) and the restless Seasons series. The same hand that painted the objective Crusaders (1903) also produced the fully abstract Composition VII (1913) - yet where one shows constrained impulse, the other displays liberated movement.

At the same time, Kandinsky also devoted himself to literary activity. In 1912, Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published. Overturning the established conception of art altogether, this book became the first theoretical foundation of abstraction. Having concluded that "the purposes (and therefore the means) of nature and art are essentially, organically, and cosmically different—yet equally great and equally powerful," the artist proclaimed the creative process as "self-expression and self-development of the spirit." In addition, Kandinsky wrote the memoir Steps (1913; Russian translation: Stairs) and the poetry collection Sounds (1913), which included 55 black-and-white and color lithographs.

Russia, 1914-1921

When World War I began, Kandinsky was forced to leave Germany. On August 3, 1914, he and Gabriele moved to Switzerland, where Kandinsky began working on what would later become his book Point and Line to Plane. In November of the same year, they parted. Gabriele returned to Munich, and Kandinsky went to Moscow. In the autumn of 1916, Kandinsky met Nina Andreevskaya, the daughter of a Russian general, and he married her in February 1917. During these revolutionary crisis years, Kandinsky moved between a semi-abstract style, Impressionist landscapes, and romantic fantasies. In his abstract pictures, the geometric quality of individual elements became stronger. This was due, first, to the natural process of simplification and, second, to the avant-garde artistic atmosphere of Moscow at that time.

In Russia, Kandinsky worked within the framework of post-revolutionary cultural and political development. From 1918 until 1921, he collaborated with IZO of Narkompros (the People's Committee of Education) in the field of art training and museum reform. In 1919 and 1921, he published six major articles. As Chairman of the State Purchasing Commission of the Museum Bureau of the IZO Department of Narkompros, he participated in founding twenty-two provincial museums. But Kandinsky exerted his greatest influence as a teacher at the Moscow Svomas (Free Workshops) and then at Vkhutemas. As a professor there from October 1918, he designed a special curriculum based on the analysis of color and form, developing the ideas stated in On the Spiritual in Art. Then, participating in the foundation and management of the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk), he designed a curriculum for it based on his theory.

However, his views differed from those of the Institute's board. Kandinsky's opponents—Rodchenko, Stepanova, and Popova—advocated for the exact analysis of materials and their constructive arrangement. Any display of irrationality in the creative process was emphatically denied. Kandinsky, in his turn, vigorously opposed the Constructivists. He wrote: "Just because an artist uses 'abstract' methods does not mean that he is an 'abstract' artist. It does not even mean that he is an artist. Just as there are many dead triangles (be they white or green), there are just as many dead roosters, dead horses, or dead guitars. One can just as easily be a 'realist academic' as an 'abstract academic.' A form without content is not a hand but an empty glove full of air."

The unceasing attacks of his fellow artists, who considered his works to be "mutilated spiritism" (Punin), were a determining factor in Kandinsky's decision to leave Moscow in December 1921. The pressure of socialist ideology on art, which eventually led to the appearance of socialist realism, began after 1922. Kandinsky's paintings were locked away from Soviet museums for many years.

Bauhaus, 1922-1933

After returning to Germany, Kandinsky accepted an invitation from Walter Gropius, the founder of the famous Bauhaus (the School of Construction and Design), and he and Nina moved to Weimar, where Kandinsky headed a fresco workshop. He continued to teach and develop his ideas, which focused primarily on the in-depth analytical study of individual elements of a painting. This work resulted in Point and Line to Plane (1926). Kandinsky also worked extensively and experimented with color, applying his analytical framework and conclusions to his teaching. His works again evolved: individual geometric elements increasingly came to the foreground, his palette was filled with cool color harmonies that at times were perceived as dissonant, and the circle was used differently—as a sensual symbol of perfect form. Composition VIII (1923) was the main work of the Weimar period. Alongside his conceptual works, at this time he created the fantasy-rich Small Worlds series for the Propyläen Verlag, as well as some small-scale, intimate pictures such as Small Dream in Red (1925). In addition, Kandinsky lectured and exhibited in the United States, having established the Blue Four together with Feininger, Jawlensky, and Klee.

In 1925, due to attacks by right-wing parties, the Bauhaus in Weimar was closed. The second period of the Bauhaus in Dessau began under quite favorable conditions. Kandinsky and other artists conducted free painting classes, where, in addition to teaching, they could paint freely. Yellow-Red-Blue (1925) is one of the significant works that marks the stage of "cold romanticism" in Kandinsky's oeuvre. Kandinsky wrote: "A circle, which I have used so often of late, could be called nothing other than romantic. And present-day romanticism is essentially deeper, more beautiful, more substantial, and more salutary—it is a piece of ice in which a fire burns. And if people feel only the cold and not the fire—so much the worse for them..." In Dessau, Kandinsky was once again carried away by the romantic idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the synthesis of the arts in a single work). These ideas were embodied in The Yellow Sound and in graphic illustrations for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

Kandinsky's painting of his last years at the Bauhaus was infused with ease and strange humor, which would again appear in his late Parisian works. For example, his painting Capricious (1930) belongs to this group. It evokes cosmic, Egyptian-like associations and is filled with fantastic symbolic images in the spirit of Paul Klee, with whom Kandinsky became friends at that time. Around 1931, the National Socialists (Nazis) launched a large-scale campaign against the Bauhaus, which led to its closure in 1932. Kandinsky and his wife emigrated to France, where they settled in a new house in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Between 1926 and 1933, Kandinsky painted 159 oils and 300 watercolors. Many of them, unfortunately, were lost when the Nazis declared Kandinsky's paintings—and those of many other artists—to be "degenerate."

Paris, 1934-1944

The Parisian artistic environment turned out to be indifferent to Kandinsky's presence. The reasons were his isolation from other foreign colleagues and the general lack of recognition of abstract painting. As a result of this, the artist lived and worked alone, limited to socializing only with his old friends. At this time, the final transformation of his painting system took place. Now Kandinsky did not use a combination of primary colors but worked with soft, refined, subtle nuances of color. Simultaneously, this approach enriched and complicated the repertoire of forms: in the foreground, biomorphic elements appeared, floating freely across the surface of the canvas. Kandinsky's pictures of this period are far from the feeling of "cold romanticism"; life seethes within them (see, for example, Sky Blue (1940), Complex-Simple (1939), Colorful Ensemble (1938), etc.). The artist described this period of his work as "a truly picturesque fairy tale."

During wartime, due to material shortages, the formats of his pictures became increasingly smaller, until the artist was forced to resort to small gouaches on cardboard. Again, he was confronted with aversion from the public and his colleagues. And again, he developed and refined the fundamentals of his theory: "Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world. Deeper down, it is subject to the common laws of the 'cosmic world.' And so a 'new world of art' is juxtaposed to the 'world of nature.' This 'world of art' is just as real, just as concrete. For this reason I prefer to call so-called 'abstract art' 'concrete art.'" Kandinsky, up to the very end, never doubted his "inner world"—the world of images where abstraction was not an end in itself and the language of forms was not stillborn; they arose from a will toward conciseness and vitality.

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