I ART Kandinsky...

Wassily Kandinsky 16/12/1866 - 13/12/1944


He is my favourite Artist, I love his use his colour, I love the emotion in his paintings...


Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life. -- Wassily Kandinsky, 1911

Kandinsky had always expressed a strong dislike for the color black and it is significant that he chose it as the dominating color of his last major artistic statement. Composition X - 1939






Here is a great Bibliography that I found.. Have a read and find out why I love him so..

Kandinsky studied Law and Economics - he was a successful Lecturer for Moscow Faculty of Law. 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 Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) which he founded along with Franz Marc and the Bauhaus .

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 States through numerous exhibitions 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.

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.

Click on the links to find out what paintings each of the museums have of Kandinsky..


I think the Guggenheim, NY Museum of Modern Art, the Stadtische Galerie in Lenbach and the The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow seem to have the best or at least largest collections of Kandinsky's work..

BUT here - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen - is where my favourite painting is held - I plan to visit it next year once I have finished studying (I am so getting a picture of my tattoo beside the original artwork)




I will leave you with a few beautiful images..