Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky was already thirty years old when his personal artistic approach influenced an entire generation of artists in Germany and France. He studied law at the University of Moscow at an early age and distinguished himself with various writings and a dissertation on social issues. After turning down an offer of a professorship at an Estonian university, he moved to Munich and began studying with Franz von Stuck at the Munich Art Academy in 1900. Just a few years later he was teaching as a teacher at a private art school.
Kandinsky did a lot of intellectual work on the "spiritual in art", which also brought him in 1902 in contact with the 'Berlin Secession', an artists' association around the painters Klimsch, Leistikow, Liebermann, Slevogt, Corinth, Beckmann, Barlach and Feininger. The art business in this epoch resembled a time characterized by painting towards nature themes, but also with breaks towards abstraction, so that divergences and differences about what was worth exhibiting were not absent. Thus, in 1906 he founded and exhibited together with the group 'Die Brücke' in Dresden, followed in 1907 in Munich by the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', from which - together with Franz Marc as pioneers and at the top - the group of the 'Blauer Reiter' emerged. Trips to Paris and Italy brought Kandinsky into contact with the stylistic efforts there, with Cubism and Fauvism, and contributed to the fact that his thinking was increasingly concerned with the substantial question of modern art, namely the function of the image in a world that had fallen into materialism.
All conventional pictorial means did not seem to him immaterial enough to abolish the materiality of reality. For Kandinsky, only music could thus overcome this materiality without having to lean on the representational. His paintings became increasingly non-representational, and thus an independent new orientation towards differentiated color play and rhythmicized forms emerged. Exhibitions of his works in Munich, Zurich, the U.S., and Moscow attest to the restless, yet always agile artist in search of something new, also in search of self-discovery. After stations in Moscow and Berlin, he moved to Weimar in 1922 and became a teacher at the Bauhaus there at the invitation of Walter Gropius. He meets other important artists such as Lyonel Feininger, and he founds with Paul Klee and the Russian painter Jawlensky the artist group 'The Blue Four'.
When the Bauhaus closes in 1933, Kandinsky moves to Paris. There he meets other important artists such as Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Joan Miro, Piet Mondrian and Hans Arp. In 1937 the National Socialists defame his works. Over 57 paintings are confiscated and removed from German museums.
Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky was already thirty years old when his personal artistic approach influenced an entire generation of artists in Germany and France. He studied law at the University of Moscow at an early age and distinguished himself with various writings and a dissertation on social issues. After turning down an offer of a professorship at an Estonian university, he moved to Munich and began studying with Franz von Stuck at the Munich Art Academy in 1900. Just a few years later he was teaching as a teacher at a private art school.
Kandinsky did a lot of intellectual work on the "spiritual in art", which also brought him in 1902 in contact with the 'Berlin Secession', an artists' association around the painters Klimsch, Leistikow, Liebermann, Slevogt, Corinth, Beckmann, Barlach and Feininger. The art business in this epoch resembled a time characterized by painting towards nature themes, but also with breaks towards abstraction, so that divergences and differences about what was worth exhibiting were not absent. Thus, in 1906 he founded and exhibited together with the group 'Die Brücke' in Dresden, followed in 1907 in Munich by the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', from which - together with Franz Marc as pioneers and at the top - the group of the 'Blauer Reiter' emerged. Trips to Paris and Italy brought Kandinsky into contact with the stylistic efforts there, with Cubism and Fauvism, and contributed to the fact that his thinking was increasingly concerned with the substantial question of modern art, namely the function of the image in a world that had fallen into materialism.
All conventional pictorial means did not seem to him immaterial enough to abolish the materiality of reality. For Kandinsky, only music could thus overcome this materiality without having to lean on the representational. His paintings became increasingly non-representational, and thus an independent new orientation towards differentiated color play and rhythmicized forms emerged. Exhibitions of his works in Munich, Zurich, the U.S., and Moscow attest to the restless, yet always agile artist in search of something new, also in search of self-discovery. After stations in Moscow and Berlin, he moved to Weimar in 1922 and became a teacher at the Bauhaus there at the invitation of Walter Gropius. He meets other important artists such as Lyonel Feininger, and he founds with Paul Klee and the Russian painter Jawlensky the artist group 'The Blue Four'.
When the Bauhaus closes in 1933, Kandinsky moves to Paris. There he meets other important artists such as Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Joan Miro, Piet Mondrian and Hans Arp. In 1937 the National Socialists defame his works. Over 57 paintings are confiscated and removed from German museums.
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