Wassily Kandinsky: Pioneer of Abstract Painting (1866-1944)

This five-part lecture series will explore the life and
work of the Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky.
A pioneer of abstract modern painting, Kandinsky
employed his synaesthetic and spiritual sensibilities
to reveal the unique interrelationships between color,
form and sound. His groundbreaking treatise from
1911, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, continues to
influence artists and creatives to this day. Kandinsky
carried Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk to
a new apotheosis of expression, paving the way for
interdisciplinary exploration in all artistic media.

January 23: Early Years: From Moscow to Munich
(1866-1896)
Born in 1866 in Moscow to well educated, upper-
class parents and raised in Odessa, Kandinsky
showed an early talent for painting, piano and cello.
He entered the University of Moscow in 1886 to
study law, ethnography and economics, but his
interest in art and music only continued to increase.
After completing his degree in 1892, he started his
career by lecturing in law at the university. In 1896,
he abandoned Russia and the law to study painting
in Munich.

January 30: Munich, Münter, Murnau and
Metamorphosis (1896-1914)
After studying painting at the Munich Academy,
Kandinsky opened his own school in the Alps. He
embarked upon a personal and artistic partnership
with his pupil, Gabriele Münter, that included years
of travel throughout Europe. Gradually, Kandinsky’s
style became increasingly abstract, until he made
the final breakthrough to non-objective painting
in 1910. The following years saw the publication of
his treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and the
founding of The Blue Rider, an association of artists
named after Kandinsky’s eponymous painting. The
Blue Rider artistic movement exerted a vast influence
on European culture through the publication of the
multidisciplinary Blue Rider Almanac.

February 6: Return to Russia (1914-1921)
The outbreak of World War I necessitated
Kandinsky’s return to Russia. Severing his
relationship with Gabriele Münter, he married a
young woman in Moscow, Nina Andreevskaya and
settled into the Soviet system. In rapid succession,
he became a professor at the Moscow Academy of
Fine Arts, a member of the People’s Commissariat for
Public Instruction, director of the Moscow Museum
for Pictorial Culture, professor at the University of
Moscow and founder of the Russian Academy of
Artistic Sciences. In spite of his success, however,
Kandinsky found the rise of Social Realism stifling
and so, upon receiving an invitation to teach at the
Bauhaus, he and his wife left for Berlin.

February 13: Bauhaus (1921-1933)
At the Bauhaus, Kandinsky began a productive
period of painting and pedagogy, consolidating
his theories regarding spirituality, psychology
and form in his second treatise, Point and Line to
Plane, published in 1926. The stimulating exchange
between Kandinsky and his equally synaesthetically
inclined colleagues, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and
Alexej von Jawlensky bore fruit in the formation of
the Blue Four group, which exerted an international
influence, stretching as far as California.

February 20: Paris (1933-1944)
The rise of the Third Reich and enforced closure of
the Bauhaus led Kandinsky and his wife to emigrate
to Paris and seek French citizenship. The artist’s
work was denounced by the Nazis as “degenerate,”
and many of his paintings were confiscated and
destroyed. Kandinsky’s final years led to a refinement
and synthesis of his styles and subjects, combining
his early expressionistic elements with the geometric
structure of his Bauhaus period and surrealist
biomorphic forms in intricate, complex compositions.
Kandinsky died in Paris in 1944, leaving the bulk of
his vast oeuvre to the French state. His work became
the foundation for the Pompidou collection.