KANDINSKY, WASSILY
Publié le 22/02/2012
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KANDINSKY, WASSILY (1866–1944), painter and writer; La´szlo´ Moholy-
Nagy* called him ‘‘the great initiator of abstract painting, whose theoretical
work represents the beginning of a new art history'' (Selz). Born in Moscow,
he received a solid education in music* and jurisprudence. After he completed
formal studies in 1893, he began a legal apprenticeship; indeed, until age thirty
he never studied art. But in 1896 he terminated his legal career, rejected a
professorship, and, relocating to Munich, turned his attention to painting.
Studying first in a private studio, then at the Kunstakademie under Franz von
Stuck, Kandinsky soon formed friendships with Marianne von Werefkin, Paul
Klee,* and Alexej von Jawlensky. In 1901 he helped found Phalanx, a group
designed ‘‘to further common interest by close cooperation.'' He sponsored
eleven exhibitions during Phalanx's three-year history and was also active in
the Mu¨nchner Sezession and the Berliner Sezession and in the German Artists'
Association. His technique began incorporating abstract elements around 1907.
‘‘One thing became clear,'' he later wrote; ‘‘objectiveness, the depiction of
objects, needed no place in my paintings, and was indeed harmful to them.''
Late in 1908 he led a group of painters out of the Mu¨nchner Sezession; these
formed the New Artists' Association. Finally, in 1911 he and Franz Marc established
Der Blaue Reiter (The blue rider), a group identified by the title of a
1903 Kandinsky painting. Focused by Kandinsky's two essays of 1912, U ¨ ber
das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the spiritual in art) and ‘‘U¨ ber die Formfrage''
(Concerning the question of form), Blaue Reiter was soon the vanguard
of Expressionism.*
War forced Kandinsky back to Russia and ended his most productive period
(he painted about one hundred canvases during 1910–1914). In Moscow the
Revolution brought appointment to the People's Commissariat for Popular Culture
and to a professorship at the Fine Arts Academy. He was named director
of the Museum of Pictorial Culture in 1919 and became founder and vice president
of the Academy of Artistic Sciences in 1921. His interest in synthesizing
the arts and sciences helped stimulate Constructivism. But growing conservatism
and the Bolsheviks' cool response to his color and form prompted his return to
Germany before 1922. Walter Gropius* soon invited him to teach mural painting
at the Bauhaus.* In 1924 he joined Klee, Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger*—
all Bauhaus colleagues—in the exhibition group Blaue Vier.
Kandinsky took German citizenship in 1928. In December 1933 he moved to
Paris. His work, reverting to a style freer than that practiced since 1918, again
emphasized color. Not until the NSDAP exhibited fourteen of his works in the 1937 show Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) did he begin criticizing the Third
Reich. He became a French citizen in 1939.
Liens utiles
- SPIRITUEL DANS L’ART ET DANS LA PEINTURE EN PARTICULIER (DU), Wassily Kandinsky
- Wassily Kandinsky: Initiateur de l'art abstrait
- Wassily Kandinsky.
- Wassily KANDINSKY VUE DE MURNAU
- Wassily KANDINSKY MURNAU, LA JOHANNISSTRASSE