Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Moscú
Moscú
The most radical revolution in the world of Art since the Renaissance was not carried out by a young nonconformist, but rather by a distinguished Russian professor who at the age of 30 left Moscow to travel to Germany and devote himself completely to painting. His work at that time, with an absolutely narrative style, did not yet presage the profound change that was to take place in his development.
It was his fascination with the French Impressionists that led him to emigrate to the West. His first destination was Munich, where in 1901 he found the group called Phalanx in order to promote young artists and exhibit their work. There he adopted German nationality, and would later change to French nationality. The truth is, Art was his only homeland, and for him his different passports had only instrumental value.
Between 1906 and 1908 he travelled all over Europe and exhibited repeatedly in Paris, where he came into contact with Fauvism and Cubism. His work filled with brilliant colors that promised the aesthetic revolution that was to come, starting in 1910 when he painted his first abstract watercolor.
In 1912 he founded the expressionist group “The Blue Rider,” and he published the essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” in which he set the philosophical bases for Abstraction. His idea of spirituality led him to break with the figurative representation of objects to go on to a new symbolic code in which each shape is impregnated with non-material meanings.
In 1914 he returned to Russia when the First World War broke out. He stayed there until 1921, when he returned to Germany to work with the Bauhaus school. His painting became more geometric in accordance with the rationalist principles of the group.
The unstoppable rise of the Nazis forced him to leave Germany again in 1933, when the new regime ordered the Bauhas closed. He returned to Paris, and there he continued his artistic work, filling his canvases with new forms of a more organic style that was similar to Surrealism and the imagery of Joan Miró.
Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944 without having witnessed the consagration of abstract Art. This would not happen until the end of the Second World War. Since then, he has been one of the most influential artists in the field of painting in the whole second half of the twentieth century. And he is considered the precursor of Abstract Expressionism.
It was his fascination with the French Impressionists that led him to emigrate to the West. His first destination was Munich, where in 1901 he found the group called Phalanx in order to promote young artists and exhibit their work. There he adopted German nationality, and would later change to French nationality. The truth is, Art was his only homeland, and for him his different passports had only instrumental value.
Between 1906 and 1908 he travelled all over Europe and exhibited repeatedly in Paris, where he came into contact with Fauvism and Cubism. His work filled with brilliant colors that promised the aesthetic revolution that was to come, starting in 1910 when he painted his first abstract watercolor.
In 1912 he founded the expressionist group “The Blue Rider,” and he published the essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” in which he set the philosophical bases for Abstraction. His idea of spirituality led him to break with the figurative representation of objects to go on to a new symbolic code in which each shape is impregnated with non-material meanings.
In 1914 he returned to Russia when the First World War broke out. He stayed there until 1921, when he returned to Germany to work with the Bauhaus school. His painting became more geometric in accordance with the rationalist principles of the group.
The unstoppable rise of the Nazis forced him to leave Germany again in 1933, when the new regime ordered the Bauhas closed. He returned to Paris, and there he continued his artistic work, filling his canvases with new forms of a more organic style that was similar to Surrealism and the imagery of Joan Miró.
Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944 without having witnessed the consagration of abstract Art. This would not happen until the end of the Second World War. Since then, he has been one of the most influential artists in the field of painting in the whole second half of the twentieth century. And he is considered the precursor of Abstract Expressionism.