Wassily Kandinsky

Born. 04.12.1866 in Moscow
Died. 13.12.1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine

Russian painter, graphic artist and art historian, expressionist and abstract painting

About the artist

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was born on 4 December 1866 in Moscow. He grew up in Odessa, where he attended Grekov Odessa Art School. After graduating, he continued his education studying law and economics at the University of Moscow. Being so knowledgeable in his chosen fields, he received a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (Which is now a part of Estonia).

It was only when Kandinsky turned 30 that he found his real interest in painting. He began with life drawings, sketches, and anatomy.

In 1896, Kandinsky moved to Munich, attending Anton Ažbe’s private school and later at the Academy of Fine Arts.

In the summer of 1902, Gabriele Münter joined him for his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. The beginning of a close friendship for them both. At the beginning of the 20th century, Kandinsky produced work in abundance, the landscapes and towns he painted, were filled with colour and distinguishable forms.

Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider’s cloak is medium blue and the shadows from his cloak and the surrounding trees are a darker blue. In The Blue Rider, Kandinsky shows the focus was more on the colours than on the details, possibly highlighting the changes that were to come from him.

At the start of World War I in 1914, he returned to Moscow.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Kandinsky helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting before returning to Germany in 1920. He secured a position at the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture and stayed until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Leaving Germany, he moved to France, where he spent the rest of his life painting. He was proud to become a French citizen in 1939 and produced some of his most famous pieces of art during his time in France. Kandinsky died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.