Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian art theorist and painter, was one of the pioneers of abstract modern art. He believed that “objects damaged pictures,” so explored abstract forms and colour as a way to evoke spirituality and human emotion. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. He created his own pictorial language that transcended the physical world and illustrated human experience. Kandinsky viewed music as the most sublime form of abstract art and believed his paintings could communicate certain sounds. Kandinsky's art and ideas influenced many generations of artists, from his students at the Bauhaus to the Abstract Expressionists after World War II and opened doors for an expanded perception.
Wassily Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow to well educated, upper-class parents of mixed ethnic origins. At an early age, Kandinsky exhibited an extraordinary sensitivity toward the stimuli of sounds, words, and colors. His father encouraged his unique and precocious gift for the arts and enrolled him in private drawing classes, as well as piano and cello lessons. Despite early exposure to the arts, Kandinsky did not turn to painting until he reached the age of 30. Instead, he entered the University of Moscow in 1886 to study law, ethnography, and economics. In spite of the legal focus of his academic pursuits, Kandinsky's interest in color symbolism and its effect on the human psyche grew throughout his time in Moscow. In particular, an ethnographic research trip in 1889 to the region of Vologda, in northwest Russia, sparked an interest in folk art that Kandinsky carried with him throughout his career. In 1896 Kandinsky attended the art school of Anton Azbe in Munich. At Azbe's school he met co-conspirators such as Alexei Jawlensky, who introduced Kandinsky to the artistic avant-garde in Munich. As he traveled throughout Europe and northern Africa with Munter from 1903 until 1909, Kandinsky familiarized himself with the growing Expressionist movement and developed his own style based on the diverse artistic sources he witnessed on his travels.
Kandinsky painted his breakthrough work, Der Blaue Reiter (1903) during this transitional period. This early work revealed his interest in disjointed figure-ground relationships and the use of color to express emotions rather than appearances - two aspects that would dominate his mature style. When time progressed, his paintings became more and more abstracted from the surrounding world as he gradually refined his style. He began titling works Improvisation, Composition, or Impression to further stress their distance from the objective world and continued to use similar titles throughout the rest of his career.
Blaue Reiter
In 1911 Kandinsky together with his friend, Frantsem Mark and other artists, established a group called Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter). The Blue Rider group of artists shared a common desire to express spirituality through their art. Though their aims and approaches varied from artist to artist, in general the group believed in the promotion of modern art and the possibility for spiritual experience through the symbolic associations of sound and color - two issues very near and dear to Kandinsky's heart. Despite the similarities between the group's moniker and the title of Kandinsky's 1903 painting, the artists actually arrived at the name "Der Blaue Reiter" as a result of the combination of Marc's love of horses and Kandinsky's interest in the symbolism of the rider, coupled with both artists' penchant for the color blue.
Influence On the 20th Century
Kandinsky's work, both artistic and theoretical, played a large role in the philosophic foundation for later modern movements, in particular Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock was interested in Kandinsky's late paintings and was fascinated by his theories about the expressive possibilities of art, in particular, his emphasis on spontaneous activity and the subconscious. Kandinsky's analysis of the sensorial properties of color was immensely influential on the Color Field painters, like Mark Rothko, who emphasized the interrelationships of hues for their emotive potential. Even the 1980s artists working in the Neo-Expressionist resurgence in painting, like Julian Schnabel and Philip Guston, applied his ideas regarding the artist's inner expression on the canvas to their postmodern work. Kandinsky set the stage for much of the expressive modern art produced in the 20th century.
Kandinsky & NFT
Kandinsky also had a big interest in writing literature. In 1912 his book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" was published. In this book, he turned the established idea about art in general upside down. The book became the first theoretical foundation of abstractionism. Having come to an idea, that "the purposes (and therefore, means) of nature and arts are essentially, organically and according to the laws of the Universe are various - and equally great... and equally strong", the artist proclaimed creative process of "self-expression and self-development of spirit". Just like with Matisse, we can see that Kandinsky was breaking free from the traditional art ways. The same way the NFT movement is breaking free from the traditional art world.
Wassily Kandinsky
1866 - 1944
Intrigued by the abstraction of Kandinsky’s work, the Swayils AI studied her 4 favourite pieces from the artist: Composition II (1923), Orange (1923), Composition VIII (1923) and Untitled (1934) creating her 444 masterpieces that exist on the Ethereum blockchain today.
These pieces illustrate the style ethos of the artist's interest in Suprematism and Constructivism. Kandinsky’s use of circles, grids, semicircles, triangles, and other mathematical forms reflect his belief that shape and color alone could communicate emotion and sounds.
Sources:
Mymodernnet.com
Wassilykandinsky.net
Theartstory.org
‘Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.’
~ Wassily Kandinsky
‘Imagination Is what allows your mind to discover.’
~ Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation. Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries. Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society.