Kandinsky

Vassily Kandinsky is another favorite artist of mine. He was born in 1866 in Moscow and died in 1944. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia, lived in Moscow, Munich, Berlin, and Paris, and was married twice. For many he is known as "the father of abstract painting" - though not because he was the first abstract painter, but instead because of the depth and breadth of his work from 1900 to 1944.

Kandinsky was a prolific painter, producing a great variety of work, which I will discuss next. He was also an influential writer and professor of the arts, detailing his thoughts on color, composition, and culture. Kandinsky believed a true work of art should involve music, color and movement. Over his years as an artist he was active in many organizations that furthered the theory and study of art.

For those who study art history Kandinsky's works can broken down roughly into three separate phases. First, he spent much time studying color and seems to have derived inspiration from the impressionist movement and the use of dots and dashes of color. This phase of his art work lasted from 1900 to approximately 1914, and was also known as his "heroic" years; he spent most of this time period in Munich.

In 1914, when WWI started, Kandinsky left Munich for Switzerland and eventually ended up back in Moscow where he seemed to produce very little art work from 1917 to 1921. In 1922 Kandinsky returned to Germany and landed in Munich at a German art school, called Bauhaus. During these years he entered his next phase of painting and seemed to take a distinct interest in the importance of structure and geometry in painting. His paintings were still rich with color and contrast, but the subjects became far more geometric and abstract.

In 1933 Kandinsky made his final move, coming to Paris where he continued to paint. His paintings entered their third phase during this time becoming more organic. In the world of art history, one would say his paintings became biomorphic (to me this means if I were to look at a slide on a microscope of a bunch of cells the stuff I saw on the slide would be similar to the stuff in Kandinsky's paintings). His paintings during this period were described as pulsating with life and living substance.

I have attached three paintings from throughout his lifetime. Can you tell which painting came from which period in his life?

Here's a hint - the first is called Blue Rider (painted in 1903), the second is called Study of Squares (painted in 1913), and third is called Dominant Curve (painted in 1936).