Vasilii kandinsky biography

Biography of Wassily Kandinsky

Born in Moscow on December 4, 1866, Kandinsky spent much of his early life in Odessa. Although fascinated with art from a young age, he studied law and economics at the University of Moscow before declining a teaching position to fully pursue art at the Kunstacademie in Munich. The Bavarian city, bustling with cultural activity, would turn out to be the fertile ground for the development of avant-garde experiences. Kandinsky’s first works were inspired by post-impressionist examples; however, thesehighly stylized yet still figurative depictions of urban and natural landscapes, grew increasingly abstract with time and his search for spirituality. This quest would culminate with an outright rejection and breakdown of the object down to its building blocks: line, shape, and color, as he explained in his 1911 illustrated text Concerning the Spiritual in Art – one of the most influential theoretical writings in art history.

Along with fellow artists Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, and a few others, Kandinsky founded the avant-garde group Der Blaue Reiter, one of the two faces of German Expressionism. A network of loose-knit artists rather than a coherent group, they were united by the aim to pursue the spiritual dimension of art, which they saw as the means to transcend reality and escape the alienation of the modern era. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Der Blaue Reiter Project came to an end and the group members parted ways. Kandinsky returned to Russia where he spent the following 8 years highly involved in the national cultural institutions having directing positions in both the Institute of Artistic Culture and the Museums of Painterly Culture.

In 1922, he returned to Germany once again, following the political cooling and deceptive stability of post-World War I Europe. He had an imperative role within t

Russian painter and art theorist (1866–1944)

"Kandinsky" redirects here. For other uses, see Kandinsky (disambiguation).

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Wassilyevich and the family name is Kandinsky.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia). Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky "became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky" and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then, "his spiritual outlook... was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society" and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Early life

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. One of his great-grandmothers was Princess Gantimurova

Summary of Wassily Kandinsky

One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience. His visual vocabulary developed through three phases, shifting from his early, representational canvases and their divine symbolism to his rapturous and operatic compositions, to his late, geometric and biomorphic flat planes of color. Kandinsky's art and ideas inspired many generations of artists, from his students at the Bauhaus to the Abstract Expressionists after World War II.

Accomplishments

• Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries.
• Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society.
• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.

The Life of Wassily Kandinsky

Important Art by Wassily Kandinsky

Progression of Art

Biography Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Early Life

Wassily Kandinsky was born into a wealthy family of merchants in Moscow in 1866. His parents divorced when he was five-years-old and he spent most of his childhood in Odessa.

In 1892, he married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina, and accepted a position teaching law at the university in Moscow. In letters and interviews, Kandinsky always talked about his early life and how he was deeply influenced by music and colors. Some scholars believe that the artist was a synesthete, an individual who synthesizes color and sounds simultaneously. Eventually, the pull on Kandinsky’s artistic inclinations overwhelmed him. At the age of 30, he enrolled in art school in Munich.

Germany

Kandinsky’s wife had never intended to marry an artist, so the couple eventually split. They did not officially divorce until 1911, but Kandinsky began a live-in affair with Gabriele Münter. A single woman living with a still-married man caused quite the scandal, but the relationship continued until the outbreak of WWI.

The artist made waves with his radical thinking and never-before-seen abstract forms. He founded the group Der Blaue Reiter (named for his iconic painting of 1903) and wrote his first treatise titled, On the Spiritual in Art. His paintings were well-received and he enjoyed international success at exhibitions in England and the United States.

Return to Russia

When WWI broke out in Europe, Kandinsky moved back to Russia. He was not a very prolific painter at this time, but chose to focus his efforts instead on art reform. He oversaw the organization of 22 Russian museums and was named Commissariat of Popular Culture.

He also taught theoretical classes at the University of Moscow and founded the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At the age of 50, he married his 17-year-old student, Nina Andreievskaya. The couple had one son, but he died tragically at just three-years-old.

Bauhaus

At the beginning of the 1920s, Kandinsky w