His Early Life

Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky, better known as Wassily Kandinsky, was a Russian painter and art theorist. He was born in Moscow, Russia on 16 December 1866. Kandinsky’s father was a wealthy tea merchant. Wassily grew up in a good cultural environment, partly European and partly Asian. His family was genteel, well-to-do and fond of travelIng. In 1871, the Wassily family moved to Odessa where his father ran his tea factory. Wassily was credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art, in which the use of shapes, lines, forms, colors and textures play an important role. However, it does not necessarily represent reality. Kandinsky is also hailed as the father of the pure abstraction movement in the early 20th century.

A Powerful Personality

Wassily was the proud owner of a powerful personality. He had the air of authority that would contribute to his success in any field that he preferred to choose. He was tall, large-framed, impeccably dressed and had the habit of holding his head high. Wassily was always confident in his life and had an impeccable demeanour. According to historians, he resembled a mixture of a diplomat, scientist, and Mongol prince.

His Law Education

Wassily’s parents wanted to see him as a future lawyer and his education started after his family moved to Odessa from Moscow in 1871. While attending grammar school, Wassily learned to play the piano and the cello. He also started to learn drawing from a coach. According to his own statement, ‘each color lives by its mysterious life’. He went to Moscow and entered the Law Faculty of Moscow University. He graduated there with honors. In 1893, Wassily became Docent (Associate Professor) of the Law Faculty and continued teaching. In 1896, thirty-year-old Wassily Kandinsky was appointed Professor to the Department of Law at the ‘Derpt University in Tartu’. But, at this time, Wassily decided to give up his successful career to devote himself fully to painting. His visit to an exhibition of the French Impressionists in Moscow in 1895 and the emotional shock that he experienced after viewing Monet’s ‘Haystacks’, and Richard Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin‘ at the Bolshoi Theatre made him change his career from law to art.

His Europen Tour

Kandinsky left for Munich in 1896 as Munich was considered one of the centres of European art at that time. He entered Anton Azbe’s prestigious private painting school, where he received the first skills in image composition and work with line and form. As Kandinsky realised that he was not happy with his progress there, he entered the Munich Academy of Arts and studied under Frans Stuck, a German artist. Both the master and the student were happy with the progress that he achieved there. During that period, Kandinsky became acquainted with a young artist, Gabriela Munter. In 1903 he divorced his wife. He and Gabriela became lifelong friends and together they travelled across Europe. During their tour, they were engaged in painting and participating in exhibitions.

His Productive Years at Murnau

Kandinsky returned to Bavaria in 1909 and settled down with Gabriela in the small town of Murnau at the bottom of the Alps. There was a visible change in his artistic style, with the play of colour spots and lines gradually superseding images of reality. The paintings made by Kandinsky during this period include ‘Sluice’ (1901), ‘Old Town’ (1901), ‘Blue Rider’ (1903), ‘The Gulf Coast in Holland’ (1904), ‘The Bailey’, (1908). At that very time, he turned to Russian fairy epics, creating captivating images like ‘Russian Rider’, (1902), ‘Russian Beauty on the Landscape Background’ (1904), ‘Russian Village on the River with the Shllops’. Between 1910 and 1914, the list of pioneer abstract artists included many fine painters. Kandinsky was an active member of the avant-garde movement in Munich, helping to found in 1909 the new Artists’ Association. Following disagreement within this group, he and the German painter Franz Marc founded in 1911 an informally organized rival group called ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ or the ‘The Blue Rider’.

The World War I and his resettlement in Russia

After World War I was declared in 1914, Kandinsky broke off his relationship with his long-time mistress, Gabriele Munter and returned to Russia. In 1917, he married a Moscow woman, Nina Aandreevskaya, whom he had met the previous year. Although his bride was many years younger than him, the marriage turned out to be highly successful. Wassily decided to settle down in Moscow with the intention of reintegrating himself into Russian life. He initially received encouragement from the new Soviet government, which was eager to win the favour and services of avant-garde artists. In 1918, Wassily became a professor at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the arts section of the People’s Commissariat for Public Instruction.

The Height of His Career

In 1919, Wassily created the Institute of Artistic Culture, became director of the Moscow Museum for Pictoral Culture and helped organize 22 museums across the Soviet Union. In 1921, he founded the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences. By this time, the then Soviet government was slowly veering from avant-garde art to Social Realism. So, at the end of the year, Wassily and his wife left Moscow for Berlin. In spite of the war, the Russian Revolution and official duties, he found time to paint numerous pictures during this Russian interlude. During this period, Wassly’s artistic style also saw a drastic transformation.

Bauhaus period of Wassily

Wassily Kandinsky had already become very popular as a painter by this time. He had always been interested in teaching as a profession and had the experience of teaching, first as a lecturer in law and economics then as a master of painting in a painting school that he had organized in Munich and as a professor at the University of Moscow. Hence he did not hesitate when in 1922 he received an offer of a teaching post at Weimer in the already famous Bauhaus school of architecture and applied art. In spite of finding the job somewhat routine, he appeared to have found life at the Bauhaus rewarding and pleasant. When, in 1933, the Nazis regarded his abstract art as degenerate, they forced the Bauhaus to close and Wassily immigrated to Paris. His famous painting ‘Development in Brown’ was made during this period.

Wassily in Paris

Wassily had become a naturalised French citizen in 1939. He lived in Paris during the remaining eleven years of his life in an apartment in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Some of the important works made during this period were ‘Violet Dominant’, ‘Dominant Curve’, ‘Moderation’ and ‘Tempered Elan’, etc. Kandinsky died in 1944, after leaving his profound influence on the abstract act which he also often preferred to call ‘Concrete art’.