Creativity of Wassily Vasilyevich Kandinsky
(1866-1944)
The work of Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky is a unique phenomenon of Russian and European art. It was this artist, endowed with a powerful talent, brilliant intellect and subtle spiritual intuition, who was destined to make a real revolution in painting and create the first abstract compositions.
The fate of Kandinsky was not quite usual. Until the age of thirty, he did not even think about art. After graduating in 1893 from the law faculty of Moscow University, he began working on his dissertation, participated in an ethnographic expedition to the north of Russia, and in 1896 received an invitation from the university in Derpt (now Tartu, Estonia) to take the position of Privatdozent. But in the same year, Kandinsky suddenly changed his life. The reason for this was the impression of the painting "Haystack" by Claude Monet at the French Industrial and Art Exhibition in Moscow. Having abandoned the department, he went to Germany to study painting. Kandinsky settled in Munich, which at the turn of the century was the recognized center of German Art Nouveau. He studied first at a private school of painting, and later at the Munich Academy of Arts under Franz von Stuck.
Living in Germany, Kandinsky came to Russia almost every year and presented his works at exhibitions of the Moscow Association of Artists, the New Society of Artists, etc. His articles about the art of Germany, which played such an important role in shaping the creative personality of the painter. At the same time, Kandinsky was excited and inspired by the Russian artistic tradition: icons, ancient temples, fairy-tale characters. All of them are often present in his works, which indicates the influence of the masters of the "World of Art" on him.
Kandinsky was a born leader. Already in 1901, having barely finished his studies, he headed the Falanga art society, participated in its exhibitions and worked in the school created under him. In 1909, the master organized the "New Munich Art Association", and in 1912 - the Blue Rider group.
In the works of Kandinsky 1900-1910. various influences are felt: from German expressionism and French Fauvism (“View of Murnau”, 1908; “Houses in Murnau on the Obermarkt”, 1908) to the Russian “World of Art” (“Ladies in crinolines”, 1909). Not without the influence of symbolism, Kandinsky turned to graphics, creating a cycle of woodcuts "Poems without words" (1903).
At the beginning of the 10s. the main direction of Kandinsky's creative search was clearly defined: he wanted to focus all the means of painting on the transfer of a complex system of feelings and sensations that live in the hidden depths of the artist's soul and do not depend on the material world. Theoretically, the master formulated this problem in the book “6 Spiritual in Art” (1911), but the practical solution came to him suddenly and unusually. The artist himself described the upheaval that had taken place in his mind in the work “Steps” (1918): “I ... suddenly saw in front of me an indescribably beautiful picture, saturated with inner burning. At first I was amazed, but now with a quick step I approached this mysterious picture, completely incomprehensible in its external content and consisting exclusively of colorful spots. And the key to the riddle was found: it was my own picture, leaning against the wall and standing on its side ... In general, it became undeniably clear to me that day that objectivity is harmful to my paintings.
Probably, at that moment, the shocked master hardly realized that the picture accidentally placed on its side would become the source of a new trend in art - abstractionism. According to Kandinsky, it is the line and color spot, and not the plot, that are the carriers of the spiritual principle, their combinations give rise to an “inner sound” that evokes a response in the soul of the viewer.
All abstract works of Kandinsky, in his own words, are divided into three groups (according to the degree of distance from the subject): impressions, improvisations and compositions. If impression is born as a direct impression of the external world, then improvisation unconsciously expresses internal impressions. Finally, composition is the highest and most consistent form of abstract painting. It has no direct links to reality. Color spots and lines form a breathtaking element of movement. Kandinsky's compositions did not have individual names - only numbers (out of ten such works, seven survived).
By creating abstract compositions, Kandinsky actually changed the nature of painting - an art closely related to storytelling - and brought it closer to music, which is designed not to depict, but to express the most complex mental states.
Wassily Kandinsky - Russian artist and art theorist, marked the beginning of a dramatic period in the work of Kandinsky and became a harbinger of the emergence of abstract art. He conceived a new style, now known as On the spiritual in art ».
Bauhaus
had a profound influence on the development of modern fine arts. He was the one who freed the painting from the limiting representation and created the basis for the evolution of abstract art. His enormous influence on the art world forever changed the way painting was perceived. The artist's works were based on philosophical principles, which steadily progressed into picturesque images.
Kandinsky is, perhaps, first of all, a thinker, and then an artist. He recognized only the direction in which a saturated configuration could move and relentlessly pursued it, setting an example for other avant-garde creators. The essence of Kandinsky's abstraction is the search for a universal synthesis of music and painting, seen as parallels with philosophy and science.
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866. From early childhood, he was surprised by the variety of colors in nature, and he was constantly interested in art. Despite success in economics and law, he abandoned a promising career in the social sciences to pursue a creative vocation.
The exhibition of Claude Monet, which the young artist visited, was the decisive impetus that inspired him to devote himself to the study of fine art. When he entered the art school in Munich, Kandinsky was already 30 years old. Even without being accepted the first time, he continued to study independently.
Vasily Vasilyevich spent two years at an art school, after which a period of wandering followed. The artist visited the Netherlands, France, Italy and Tunisia. At the time, he produced paintings heavily influenced by Post-Impressionism, reliving his childhood in Russia in imaginative landscapes of idealist significance to the artist. He settled in the town of Murnau, near Munich, and continued his exploration of landscapes, endowing them with vigorous lines and bold, hard colors.
Kandinsky thought about music, trying to convey its abstract features in other art forms. In 1911, a group of like-minded artists was formed in Munich, headed by Kandinsky. They named themselves " The Blue Rider" - "Der Blaue Reiter". Among the participants were such famous German expressionists as August Macke and Franz Marc. The group published an almanac with their own views on contemporary art and held two exhibitions before disbanding at the start of World War I in 1914.
The transition to use The transition to the use of basic pictorial elements marked the beginning of a dramatic period in Kandinsky's work and became a harbinger of the emergence of abstract art. He conceived a new style, now known as lyrical abstraction. The artist, through drawing and drawing, imitated the flow and depth of a musical work, the coloring reflected the theme of deep contemplation. In 1912 he wrote and published the seminal study "On the spiritual in art ».
In 1914, Kandinsky had to return to Russia, but he did not stop experimenting. He even participated in the restructuring of Russian art institutions after the revolution. But the true significance of his brilliant innovation became apparent only in 1923 after he returned to Germany and joined the teaching corps " Bauhaus”, where he became friends with another creative avant-garde artist, Paul Klee.
Kandinsky worked on a new pictorial formula consisting of lines, dots, and combined geometric shapes representing his visual and intellectual explorations. The lyrical abstraction has shifted towards a more structured, scientific composition.
After ten years of fruitful work, in 1933 the Nazi authorities closed the Bauhaus school. Kandinsky was forced to move to France, where he spent the rest of his life.
The last eleven years the Russian genius has dedicated to the constant pursuit of the great synthesis of his abstract ideas and visual discoveries. He returned to intense color and lyricism, reaffirming his original views on the true nature of painting. The great artist took French citizenship and created some of the most famous works of art in his new homeland. He died in 1944 in Neuilly at the age of 77.
The new Nazi authorities in 1937 proclaimed the works of Wassily Kandinsky, as well as the works of his contemporaries Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Franz Marc and Piet Mondrian, "degenerate art", and two years later more than a thousand paintings and thousands of sketches were publicly burned in the atrium of a fire station in Berlin. However, the persuasive power of Wassily Kandinsky's iconic artwork did not fade under the weight of history and triumphed on the stage of art history.
1. Sequence, 1935
This is practically a piece of music, marked by a late period in the work of Kandinsky. Closed fields with scattered elements of the composition flowing into certain forms. The artist returned to his abstract roots.
2. The Blue Rider, 1903
This painting was the inspiration for the creation of one of the most influential groups in the history of modern art - Der Blaue Reiter. This early work is written on the edge of abstraction.
3. "Beach baskets in Holland", 1904
Landscape borrowed from a trip to the Netherlands. The scene is presumably influenced by Impressionism.
4. "Autumn in Murnau", 1908
The gradual transition to abstraction is marked by expressionism in the landscape.
5. “Akhtyrka. Red Church, 1908
Russian landscape in which the artist resurrected his homesickness.
6. "Mountain", 1909
An almost completely abstract landscape with small outlines suggesting a hill and human figures.
7. "The first abstract watercolor", 1910
This work is of historical value as Kandinsky's first fully abstract watercolor.
8. "Improvisation 10", 1910
Improvisation in drawing and color gives clues, but does not fully reveal or concretize the images. early abstraction.
9. "Lyrical", 1911
In his painting, the artist often relied on musical ideas, so the lyrical nature of his strokes came naturally. This is one of his "artistic poems".
10. "Composition IV", 1911
There is a story that Kandinsky thought he had completed the painting, but as soon as his assistant accidentally turned it the other way, the perspective and overall impression of the canvas changed, making it beautiful.
11. "Improvisation 26 (Rowing)", 1912
Kandinsky often called his paintings in the manner of musical works - improvisation and composition.
12. "Improvisation 31 (Battleship)", 1913
A typical example of lyrical abstraction with strong color and emotional content.
13. "Squares with concentric circles", 1913
Already a real deep abstraction. Thus, Kandinsky conducted research in the field of color and geometry.
14. “Composition VI”, 1913
After extensive preparation for this painting, Kandinsky completed it in three days, chanting the German word "uberflut", which means flood, as a mantra for inspiration.
15. Moscow, 1916
During his stay in Moscow during the war years, Kandinsky was struck by the bustle of the big city. It is rather a portrait of the capital than a landscape reflecting all its power and turbulence.
16. "Blue", 1922
Another study of color in a very limited geometric form.
17. Black and Purple, 1923
One of the paintings painted after returning to Germany. We see still rich colors in the composition, but a distinctly sharp geometric twist pushes the lyrical strokes aside.
18. "On White II", 1923
Visual representation on two main nuances - black and white. The two opposites create a strong contrast, maintaining tension in a painting that mimics the struggle between life and death.
19. "Yellow, red, blue", 1925
As the name suggests, this is primarily an exploration of the potential of primary colors that adorn a geometric composition.
20. Composition X, 1939
This picture is also written under the influence of music. The visual elements are proportional to the musical components of the perfect symphony. Kandinsky believed that this is the secret of true painting
In 1889 he participated in an ethnographic expedition to the Vologda province, where he got acquainted with folk art and icon painting.
In 1893, after graduating from the university with a diploma of the 1st degree, he was left at the department of political economy and statistics, in 1895 he wrote a dissertation, but left science and devoted himself to art.
He refused a professorship at Dorpat University in Estonia and in 1896 went to Munich to study painting. Kandinsky studied at the school of Anton Ashbe, in 1900 he moved to the Academy of Arts in the class of the painter and sculptor Franz Stuck.
In 1901, Kandinsky founded the Phalanx art society, which organized exhibitions of young artists; In 1902 he became president of the society. In 1902, Kandinsky also became a member of the Berlin Secession - an association of artists and sculptors.
In the early 1900s, the artist traveled widely in Europe and North Africa, came to Russia, but chose Munich (1902-1908) as his permanent residence, then the town of Murnau in the Bavarian Alps.
In the early works of Kandinsky, impressions from nature served as the basis for creating colorful landscapes (The Blue Rider, 1903). The middle and second half of the 1900s were marked by a passion for Russian antiquity. In the paintings "Song of the Volga" (1906), "Motley Life" (1907), "Rock" (1909), the artist combined the rhythmic and decorative features of Russian and German Art Nouveau with the techniques of pointillism (the manner of writing with separate, non-isolated strokes) and stylized folk print.
Kandinsky also worked in the fields of arts and crafts (sketches for women's jewelry, furniture fittings), plastics (clay modeling), experimented with painting on glass.
During this period, he performed the albums of engravings "Poems Without Words" (1904) and "Woodcuts" (1909). Exhibited at the Berlin Secession (since 1902), the Parisian "Autumn Salon" (1904-1912) and the Salon of Independents (since 1908), participated in group exhibitions in Munich, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, Rome and Paris, as well as in Moscow (from 1902, 1906) and St. Petersburg (1904, 1906).
At the same time, he wrote correspondence about the artistic life of Munich for the magazines "World of Art" (1902) and "Apollo" (1909-1910).
In 1909, Kandinsky headed the Munich New Art Society, created as a result of the refusal of the organizers of the secession to accept innovative works. In 1911, due to aesthetic differences, he left the society and, together with the German painter Franz Mark, created the Blue Rider association. In 1912, he published an almanac of the same name, which became the program document of the artistic avant-garde.
In 1911, Kandinsky performed the first abstract watercolor, in 1911-1913 he painted a series of non-objective paintings "Impressions", "Improvisations" and "Compositions".
In 1912, Kandinsky published the book "On the Spiritual in Art", in which he gave the first theoretical justification for abstract art; sent a report of the same name to the All-Russian Congress of Artists in St. Petersburg (December 1911 - January 1912).
In 1913 he published the poetic book Klänge ("Sounds"), accompanied by woodcuts.
In October 1912, the first personal exhibition of the artist was held in the gallery of the Berlin association Der Sturm. The publishing house of the association published his album of paintings Rückbliсke, as well as a number of theoretical works.
At the beginning of World War I (1914-1918), Kandinsky returned to Russia. After the October Revolution of 1917, he was mainly busy with the reorganization of artistic life. In 1918 he joined the Board of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of Education, in 1919 he became a member of the International Bureau of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of Education, one of the organizers and academic secretary of the Museum of Fine Arts in Petrograd.
In 1920 he was director of the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow and a professor at Moscow University, in 1921 he was vice-president of the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences. Participated in a number of exhibitions of artists.
At the end of 1921, Kandinsky was sent to Berlin to create an international department of the Academy of Artistic Sciences and decided not to return to Russia.
In 1922, at the suggestion of the architect Walter Gropius, he taught wall painting and the theory of form at the Bauhaus training center in Weimar (Association of the Weimar Art Academy and the School of Applied Arts; since 1925 - in Dessau).
In the "Bauhaus" the artist is the leader of abstract art.
In the 1920s-1930s, Kandinsky created an album of engravings "Small Worlds" (1923), abstract scenery for "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky for the theater in Dessau (1928), design project
Music room for the International Architectural Exhibition in Berlin (1931).
He annually held solo exhibitions in Europe and the USA, participated together with Yavlensky, Feininger and Klee in exhibitions of the Blue Four group, in international exhibitions and exhibitions of Russian art.
During this period, he wrote the book "Point and Line on the Plane" (1926), which was translated into several languages.
In 1933, after the closing of the Bauhaus by the Nazis, Kandinsky received French citizenship in 1939.
In Germany, his work was shown for propaganda purposes at the exhibition "Degenerate Art" (1937), and then removed from museums.
In 1936-1944, Kandinsky held solo exhibitions at the J. Bucher Gallery in Paris, exhibited at the Neumann Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Guggenheim Gallery in London.
In November-December 1944, the last personal exhibition of the artist took place in Paris.
December 13, 1944 Wassily Kandinsky, near Paris in France. He was buried in the cemetery in Neuilly.
Kandinsky was officially married twice. In 1892 he married his cousin Anna Chemyakina, the marriage ended in the early 1900s and was annulled in 1911. In 1917, in Moscow, he married Nina Andreevskaya (1893 or 1899-1980), the daughter of an officer. In the same year, their son Vsevolod was born, who soon died. After the death of her husband, Nina Kandinsky sold and donated his paintings to museums, organized memorial exhibitions, and in 1973 published a book of memoirs, Kandinsky and I. In the early 1970s, she bought a house in Switzerland, where she was killed by a robber on September 2, 1980 (the crime remained unsolved). According to her will, 150 paintings of her husband entered the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (Center Pompidou).
Also a close friend of the artist was his student Gabriela Münter. Promising to marry her, on the eve of the First World War, he left Germany, leaving his works and papers in the care of Münter. After his return with his young wife in 1921, Münter refused to return the paintings. On her 80th birthday, Münter donated all of her paintings by the artist to the Lenbachhaus Gallery in Munich.
Currently Kandinsky. At auction, his creations are valued at tens of millions of dollars.
In 2007, the Kandinsky Prize was established in Russia - one of the most important national awards in the field of contemporary art.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
The great Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow. Kandinsky is known all over the world as one of the founders of abstractionism. As a child, the painter traveled a lot with his parents in Russia and Europe. In 1871, the family moved permanently to Odessa, where Vasily received an artistic and musical education.
Wassily Kandinsky studied at the university as a lawyer, but was forced to temporarily interrupt his studies due to deteriorating health. Kandinsky decided to paint relatively late - at that time the novice artist was already 30 years old. In 1896, Kandinsky moved to Munich, and until 1914 Germany became his second home. Today, tourists booking tours to Munich have a rare chance to visit the places where the great master of abstraction once lived and worked.
Creativity Wassily Kandinsky
Born into a wealthy family with rich cultural traditions, Kandinsky received an excellent education - his parents saw their heir as a brilliant lawyer. But at the age of 30, he felt that he should look for himself in painting and went to Germany, famous for its art schools.
Studying the composition and features of painting and graphics, Kandinsky more than once encountered a misunderstanding of teachers who found his color schemes too bright, and the layout of the picture too free.
Mountain landscape with a church Railroad The Last Judgment
Active creative activity, the organizing principle has always made Kandinsky the center of attraction for everything intellectual, restless, searching for what was in the art world of that time. So, already in 1901, he founded the artistic association "Phalanx" in Munich and organized a school under it, in which he himself taught. For four years, Kandinsky arranges twelve exhibitions of painters in the Phalanx. In 1909, together with Yavlensky, Kanoldt, Kubin, Münter and others, he founded the "New Association of Artists, Munich" and assumed chairmanship. Society's credo: "Each of the participants not only knows how to say, but also knows what to say." Since 1900, Kandinsky participated in exhibitions of the Moscow Association of Artists, and in 1910 and 1912 in exhibitions of the art association "Jack of Diamonds". Also, he publishes art-critical "Letters from Munich" in the magazines "World of Art" and "Apollo" (1902, 1909). In 1911, Kandinsky, together with his friend, the artist Franz Marc, organized the Blue Rider group. According to the artist himself, “the emphasis was on identifying the associative properties of color, line and composition, and at the same time such various sources as the romantic theory of color by Goethe and Philipp Runge, Art Nouveau and Rudolf Steiner’s theosophy were involved.”
“At no other time did Kandinsky’s painting develop as rapidly as in the Munich years,” wrote M.K. Lacoste.
– Sometimes it is not easy to understand why the founder of abstract painting initially chose subjects typical of the Biedermeier – fans, crinolines, horsemen. The style of his early works can not be called either conventional or mannered, but nothing in them foreshadowed a radical renewal of painting.
However, as you know, only a few artists are given the opportunity to simultaneously demonstrate originality in form and content. At first, it was important for Kandinsky to test his own possibilities of expression. Although the "Evening" (1904-1905) cannot be denied originality, it is difficult to imagine that it was created by the same artist who, in five or six years, will produce the first abstract work in the history of art (1910). What a great creative force must have been at work in Kandinsky! What a rapid evolution from 1908 to 1914 - from landscape paintings, although already bold in color and form, but still faithful to observations of nature, like "Houses in Murnau on the Obermarkt" (1908), to a chaotic study called "The Gorge" ( 1914) and restless compositions in the series of panels "Seasons" in the Guggenheim Museum ("Autumn"). It would be difficult to guess the hand of the same artist in the still quite objective Crusaders (1903) and in such an abstract work as Composition VII, 1913, despite their common dynamics. Here is a fettered impulse, there is a liberated movement.
The Blue Rider, painted by him in 1903, reflects the artist's borderline state. The painting represents a transition from realism to a new direction in painting and, one might say, opens a cycle of abstract works by Kandinsky. The artist did not draw, but "thought" on canvas: his canvases are a reflection of thoughts. Bright, as is the case with all extraordinary personalities, and seemingly chaotic, as is typical of the works of geniuses.
Kandinsky's painting of the last years of the Bauhaus is permeated with lightness and strange humor, which will again appear in his later Parisian works. These, for example, include the painting “Fancy”, 1930, evoking cosmic Egyptian associations and filled with fabulous symbolic images in the spirit of Paul Klee, an artist with whom Kandinsky was friends during these years. Around 1931, a massive National Socialist campaign against the Bauhaus unfolds, which leads to its closure in 1932. Kandinsky and his wife emigrate to France, where they settle in a new house in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Between 1926 and 1933 Kandinsky painted 159 oil paintings and 300 watercolors. Many of them were, unfortunately, lost after the Nazis declared the painting of Kandinsky and many other artists "degenerate".
The Parisian artistic environment reacts with restraint to the appearance of Kandinsky. The reasons for this are its isolation from foreign colleagues and the lack of recognition of abstract painting as such. As a result, the artist lives and works in solitude, limiting himself to communicating only with old friends. At this time, the last transformation of his pictorial system takes place. Now Kandinsky does not use combinations of primary colors, but works with soft, refined, subtle color nuances. At the same time, it complements and complicates the repertoire of forms: new, biomorphic elements come to the fore, which feel at ease in the space of the picture, as if floating over the entire surface of the canvas. Kandinsky's paintings of this period are far from the feeling of "cold romance", they boil and seethe with life. The artist himself called this period of creativity "a truly picturesque fairy tale." In the subsequent war years, due to a lack of materials, the formats of the paintings became smaller, up to the point when the artist was forced to be content with working with gouache on small-sized cardboard. And again, he is faced with rejection by the public and colleagues of his art. And he again develops and improves his theory base:
“Abstract art creates, next to the “real”, a new world, seemingly having nothing in common with “reality”.
Inside, he obeys the general laws of the "cosmic world". So, next to the "world of nature" a new "world of art" appears - a very real, concrete world. Therefore, I prefer to call the so-called "abstract art" concrete art." Kandinsky, to the very end, did not doubt his "inner world", the world of images, where abstraction was not an end in itself, and the language of forms was "stillborn"; they arose from the will to richness and vitality.
British scientists have finally found an explanation why the paintings of the founder of abstractionism Wassily Kandinsky do not impress all viewers. Neurophysiologists are convinced that Kandinsky painted his canvases for those whose contemplation also generates sound associations. Synesthetes, that is, people who are able to "see sounds" and "hear paintings", there are today, according to researchers, no more than 250 million people. However, scientists have found that in the first months of life we are all synesthetes.
“We are sure that Kandinsky appealed to auditory perception, although we do not know if he himself was a synesthete,” said Dr. Jamie Ward at a recent conference of British neuroscientists.
According to him, only 1-2% of us can consider ourselves synesthetes, but each person subconsciously tends to connect music and painting and perceive them together, and not separately. According to Gazeta.Ru, to test his theory, Dr. Ward set up a series of experiments in which six synesthetes were asked to describe their vision of the music performed by the New London Orchestra.
Another control group consisted of six normal people. Animation artist Sam Moore created dynamic images for them related to the music being played. These films - like Walt Disney's famous "Fantasy" - combined music and cartoon images. After experimenting with control groups, the films were shown to visitors at the Science Museum in London, who were asked to select from all the images those that best matched the music. The overwhelming majority chose exactly those images that the synesthetes turned their benevolent gaze on.
Bibliography
Albums, catalogs, monographs, collections of articles
- Sarabyanov Dmitry, Avtonomova Natalia. Wassily Kandinsky. - M.: Galart, 1994. - 238 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-269-00880-7.
- Althaus Karin, Hoberg Annegret, Avtonomova Natalia. Kandinsky and The Blue Rider. - M.: Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Publishing house of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, ScanRus, 2013. - 160 p. - ISBN 978-5-4350-0011-5.
Articles
- Reinhardt L. Abstractionism, in the book: Modernism. Analysis and criticism of the main directions, M., 1969, p. 101-11.
- Grohmann W. Wassily Kandinsky. Life and work, N. Y., 1958.
- Baedecker. Deutschland. Verlag Karl Baedeker. 2002. - ISBN 3-8297-1004-6
- Schulz,Paul Otto.Ostbauern.Köln:DuMont, 1998 - ISBN 3-7701-4159-8
- Azizyan I.A. Moscow V. V. Kandinsky // Architecture in the history of Russian culture. Issue. 2: Capital city. M.: URSS, 1998. - ISBN 5-88417-145-9 S. 66-71.
- Azizyan I.A. The concept of the interaction of arts and the genesis of dialogism of the 20th century (Vyacheslav Ivanov and Wassily Kandinsky) // Avangard of the 1910s - 1920s. The interaction of the arts. - M., 1998.
- Rappaport A. Kandinsky in London // Rossica. - 2002.- Issue 7/8: Revelations in Colour: Dionisy & Kandinsky. Or: Kandinsky in London // Idem.
- Valery Turchin. Kandinsky in Russia. M .: Artist and book, 2005. - 448s. - ISBN 5-9900349-1-1
- Azizyan I.A. The theoretical heritage of V. V. Kandinsky in the artistic consciousness of the XX century // Questions of the theory of architecture: Architectural and theoretical thought of the New and Modern times / Collection of scientific papers, ed. I. A. Azizyan. - M.: KomKniga, 2006. S. 189-249.
- Kozhev, A. Concrete (objective) painting of Kandinsky (1936) // "Atheism" and other works. - M.: Praxis, 2007. - S. 258-294.
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An artist of new art, an abstract artist who survived wars and revolutions. The Bolsheviks called his painting "degenerate". In the work - "On the Spiritual in Art" - Kandinsky reveals the psychological impact of pure color on a person, finds a connection between painting and music. Kandinsky is a master of "compositions", "improvisations" and "impressions".
A wealthy, prosperous family supported Wassily Kandinsky's aspirations for art from an early age. However, in the future he was to become a lawyer. The young man brilliantly graduated from Moscow University, after which he taught.
The fate of Wassily Kandinsky again returned him to art, when in 1895 an exhibition of French impressionists was held. Wassily Kandinsky was amazed by the work of Monet - "Hacks". Leaving the University, he went to Munich to study painting. In those days, Munich was considered the center of European art; in 1892, a modernist association of artists, the Secession, was organized.
For two years the Russian artist studied with the Yugoslav painter Anton Ashbe, becoming more and more interested in creativity, and not in technique. The first impressionist works were distinguished by a special color scheme, Kandinsky attached great importance not to the form, but to the color of the picture. So later, when Kandinsky took lessons from the famous Franz von Stuck (artist of the Secession), he had to leave his bright palette and write in black and white, studying the form. These requirements were set by the teacher, who considered Kandinsky a good student, but who had the unfortunate ability of bright colors.
Kandinsky spent four years in Munich, but no works from that time remain. It remains a mystery what their fate is, whether they were destroyed by the artist or lost.
After graduating at the age of 35, Wassily Kandinsky created his own movement of abstract artists called the Phalanx, which made him the leader of the Munich fraternity of artists. In 1901, the first exhibition of the association took place in Berlin, which presented the works of the Impressionists and the revelations of the German Art Nouveau. At this time, the artist met the young artist Gabriela Münter, and divorced his wife. For 5 years he traveled with Gabriela throughout Europe, painting and participating in exhibitions.
In 1908, Kandinsky and Gabriela returned to Munich, it so happened that they settled near the studio of the artist Paul Klee. Ten years later, they worked together at the Bauhaus, becoming like-minded people. Gabriela bought a house, they lived in it for 6 years. The house was located in Marnau, not far from the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. This period was the most productive in the life of the artist. The artist moved more and more from a concrete image to abstraction.
In 1911, together with his friend, the artist Franz Marc, Kandinsky organized the Blue Rider group. The artists were able to organize only two exhibitions.
In 1912, the first solo exhibition took place. The viewer did not accept the paintings of Kandinsky, which plunged him into deep despondency.
The World War began and Kandinsky moved from Germany to Switzerland. Here he began work on the book "Point and Line". By November 1914, he parted ways with Gabriela and went to Moscow, for almost two years the artist did not paint.
In 1916, Kandinsky met Nina Andreevskaya, the daughter of a Russian general, and a year later he married her. Having received an inheritance after the death of his father, the artist immediately lost his livelihood, the Bolsheviks confiscated all his property. Caught below the poverty line, Kandinsky fell into despair. The enthusiasm of his wife saved Kandinsky. He begins to work in the People's Commissariat of Education, becoming the head of the cinema and theater section. Then he was invited to Moscow University for the post of professor, organizing at the same time the Institute of Artistic Culture. Thanks to Kandinsky, about 22 art galleries were opened in Russia. But, unfortunately, all the efforts of Kandinsky to find himself in his country were unsuccessful, abstractionism was declared "decadent", and Kandinsky was called "a henchman of the bourgeoisie." And in 1921, having received an offer to teach at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Kandinsky left the country.
The fate of the Bauhaus was difficult. In 1924, for political reasons, the school was attacked and had to be transferred to Dessau, where it existed until 1932. Under pressure from local Nazis, the school was transferred to Berlin. In April 1833, it was finally closed. Kandinsky and his wife leave Germany for security reasons, they settle in the suburbs of Paris.
Wassily Kandinsky heard a lot of criticism in his address, the galleries did not take the artist's works. But, despite everything, the artist worked until the end of his life, remaining devoted to creativity.
Famous works of Wassily Vasilyevich Kandinsky
The painting "Improvisation 21A" was painted by a Russian artist in 1911, is in the State Gallery Lenbachhaus, in Munich. The picture was painted during the period of approval of Kandinsky - an abstractionist. In essence, this is the artist's reaction to the world around him, based on impressions and intuition.
At first glance, it seems that the picture is completely abstracted from real objects, but if you look closely, images begin to emerge. For example, a mountain is visible in the center. Bright color spots are outlined by a black outline - a characteristic feature of Kandinsky's painting in all subsequent work. Another particular image is a stylized human figure in an unnatural position.
The painting "In Gray" was made in 1919, is in the National Museum of Modern Art, in the Center. J. Pompidou, in Paris. It can be ranked among the paintings of the "Russian period" (1915-21). This picture marked the end of the period of study of the interaction of forms by Kandinsky. The artist conceived a "composition" consisting of images - mountains, figures of people, boats. Upon completion of the work, the picture turned into an abstraction with a softer color compared to previous works.
In the picture, strict geometric figures are replaced by biomorphic forms, which is typical for the artist's painting in the Parisian years. Color sounds in muted grays, browns and blues. The composition is replaced by chaos.
The painting "Vibration" was made in 1925, is in the Tate Gallery, London. The painting depicts geometric figures, which the artist writes about in Point and Line.
The contact between the sharp triangle and the circle produces no less effect than the finger of God extended to Adam in Michelangelo's painting.
V. Kandinsky
The brightest object is a chessboard. The complex structure is achieved by the unity of form and color. The painting itself is done in muted colors. Tension is conveyed by juxtaposing shapes and colors. Circles dominate like inexhaustible hidden possibilities (Kandinsky).
The painting "Up" was written in 1929, from the collection of Peggy Guggenheim, in Venice. In the "Bauhaus" period, the artist mainly painted paintings consisting of geometric shapes. “Up” is an image of a person, formed from geometric shapes. Here you can see the influence of the painting of Paul Klee. The theory "Points and lines on a plane" is traced. When Kandinsky portrayed the background, he sought to break out of the tight framework into which he had driven himself into the Bauhaus. What he succeeded later in Paris.
Masterpiece of Kandinsky V.V. – painting “Detail for Composition IV”
The painting was executed in 1910 and is in the Tate Gallery, London. The second name is "Cossacks". The artist himself said that the plot of this painting was taken from the events of the 1905 revolution, when the Cossacks galloped through the streets of Moscow. In front of the viewer are two fighting Cossacks, below them is a rainbow that forms a road leading to a palace on a blue hill. To the right are three more Cossacks. Two of them have spades. The elements of the picture are difficult to recognize, which makes the viewer stare at the images for a long time, gradually plunging into the plot. Abstraction involves abstraction from real forms and creative expression in geometric elements.
