Wassily Kandinsky – Wassily Kandinsky
Vasily Vasilievich Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow. He studied painting in Munich, and exhibited his first paintings with the group Most (Die Brücke). In 1911, he co-founded the group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and in the same year published the book On the Mental in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst), which was the foundation of the further development of abstract painting.
This was the period that had the greatest influence on his work, because it was during this time that he began to understand painting as a spiritual path. Gradually, he began to transform descriptive and recognizable elements into calligraphic lines and at the same time began to use strong colors to stimulate emotions in the manner of classical music.
He returned to Moscow in 1914, and then emigrated to Germany in 1921, where he began to work with the Bauhaus. The appearance of the Russian avant-garde at the time and the design of the Bauhaus had a tremendous impact on the artist’s abstract language and had a significant influence on his later works. Wassily Kandinsky retreated to Paris in 1933 before the Nazis, where he died in 1944.
The artist is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century and the founder of abstract painting.