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Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist supposed to have painted the world's first purely abstract pieces of art. Though he did not begin studying or producing paintings until the age of 30, he is respected as one of the most profound and influential painters in all of history. Kandinsky split his time between Moscow and Munich, and was a part of the Bauhaus school in Germany for more than a decade. Kandinsky, throughout a long and tempermental development, remained devoted to depicting personal experience through expressive techniques. He called his devotion to the beauty inherent in all things “inner necessity.”
Much of Kandinsky's formal training and artistic development happened in Moscow, where he felt continually stimulated by his surroundings. He first became fascinated with art as a child, at which time he felt an extreme predilection to certain colors. This later developed into a fascination with the symbolism of certain colors. During his teenage years he was very much influenced by folk art that he studied and its use of brilliant colors on dark backgrounds to create emotive atmospheres and profound contrasts. Until the age of 30 Kandinsky remained an artist only in his free time, and otherwise pursued law. It was at this point in his adulthood that he abandoned law to enroll in art school in Munich.
During his time in art school he became fascinated with impressionistic paintings, particular those of Monet's. Art school was a breeze for Kandinsky, and he excelled in all his classes, exceeding the other students in theory and technique. Here he began to move toward abstraction in his art, continuing to depict familiar subjects, but using broad swathes of color that show a change in his fundamental style. His paintings remain very colorful and possess a certain luminescence. The colors in Kandinsky's paintings seem to express mood and perspective rather than color the experience of the subjects of the painting.
After art school Kandinsky spent a great deal of time traveling around western Europe before settling in Bavaria. He depicted many of the scenes he saw in his travels and continued to trend toward an abstract style. Upon returning to Russia and dealing with the cultural politics of that time (the early 1920's), Kandinsky created his first truly abstract painting. At this time Kandinsky began to identify with constructivism and suprematism, both philosophies focusing on the fundamental geometry of objects as and emphasizing “art for art's sake” rather than art for social purpose.
Not only did Kandinsky baptize a new movement in art and create the first quintessentially abstract pieces of art, but he was prolific in his writings on art theory and spiritualism, often combining the two. Today Kandinsky is remembered as an innovator of modern art. There are many Kandinsky inspired pieces of original canvas art for sale in our Abstract Canvas gallery.
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