Kandinsky, Wassily definition of Kandinsky, Wassily in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Kandinsky, Wassily or Vasily (kăndĭn`skē, Rus. vəsē`lyē kəndyēn`skē), 1866–1944, Russian abstract painter and theorist. Usually regarded as the originator of abstract art, Kandinsky abandoned a legal career for painting at 30 when he moved to Munich. In subsequent trips to Paris he came into contact with the art of Gauguin Gauguin, Paul (pôl gōgăN`), 1848–1903, French painter and woodcut artist, b.
..... Click the link for more information. , neoimpressionism (see postimpressionism postimpressionism, term coined by Roger Fry to refer to the work of a number of French painters active at the end of the 19th cent. who, although they developed their varied styles quite independently, were united in their rejection of impressionism .
..... Click the link for more information. ), and fauvism fauvism (fō`vĭzəm) [Fr.
..... Click the link for more information. . He then developed his ideas concerning the power of pure color and nonrepresentational painting. His first work in this mode was completed in 1910, the year in which he wrote an important theoretical study, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912, tr. 1947 and 1977). In this work he examines the psychological effects of color with analogies between music and art.

Kandinsky exhibited with the Brücke Brücke, Die [Ger.,=the bridge], German expressionist art movement, lasting from 1905 to 1913. Influenced by the art of Jugendstil (the German equivalent of art nouveau), Van Gogh, and the primitive sculpture of Africa and the South Seas, the
..... Click the link for more information. group, and with Franz Marc and others he founded the Blaue Reiter Blaue Reiter, der (dĕr blou`ə rī`tər) [Ger.,=the blue rider], German expressionist art movement, lasting from 1911 to 1914.
..... Click the link for more information. group. In 1915 he returned to Moscow, where he taught and directed artistic activities. During the early 1920s his style evolved from riotous bursts of color in his "Improvisations" to more precise, geometrically arranged compositions. In 1921 he returned to Germany and the next year joined the Bauhaus Bauhaus (bou`hous), school of art and architecture in Germany.
..... Click the link for more information. faculty. In 1926 he wrote Point and Line to Plane (tr. 1947), which includes an analysis of geometric forms in art. At the outset of World War II, he went to France, where he spent the rest of his life. Kandinsky is particularly well represented in the Guggenheim Museum, New York City, and California's Pasadena Art Museum.

Bibliography

See his Reminiscences (1913; tr. in Modern Artists on Art, ed. by R. L. Herbert, 1964); biographies by J. Lassaigne (1964) and J. Hahl-Koch (1994); P. Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: 1896–1914 (1982); V. E. Barnett, Kandinsky: At the Guggenheim (1983); C. V. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915–1933 (1983); Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Staff, Kandinsky in Paris, 1934–1944 (1985); A. and L. Vezin, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider (1992); T. M. Messer, Vasily Kandinsky (1997); U. Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1944: The Journey to Abstraction (1999).