Thread by @karolcummins

🌀#Kandinsky🌀

Wassily Kandinsky, Russian in full Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky, born 1866, Moscow, Russia, died 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula - 1909

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🌀#Kandinsky🌀

Kandinsky is one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting.

Autumn Landscape with Boats -
1908

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After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential #GermanExpressionism group Der Blaue Reiter & focused on painting. abstracts.

Blaue Reiter - 1903

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His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic (e.g., Tempered Élan, 1944).

Improvisation 6 (African) - 1909

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His family was comfortable & enjoyed traveling often to Venice, Rome, Florence, the Caucasus, and the Crimean Peninsula.

Winter Landscape - 1909

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In 1871, Kandinsky’s parents settled in Odessa. There he completed his secondary schooling & his hobbies included performing on the piano and the cello.

Odessa Port - 1898

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He also enjoyed painting & later recalled, he felt each color had a mysterious life of its own.

Der Blaue Berg (The Blue Mountain) (1908-09)

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He studied law & economics at the University of Moscow.

Gabriele Munter, Kallmunz

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In 1889 he traveled to the province of Vologda & he returned with a lasting interest in the often garish, nonrealistic styles of RU folk painting.

Cemetery & Vicarage In Kochel, Summer Landscape - 1909

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During that same year he discovered the Rembrandts in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg & later he visited Paris and devoured the museums there.

Murnau, Dorfstrasse - 1908

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In 1893 Kandinsky earned a degree the equivalent of a doctorate.

Murnau Burggrabenstrasse 1 - 1908

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1909. Wassily Kandinsky. Cemetery And Vicarage In Kochel

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Wassily Kandinsky - Lake Starnberg - 1908

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Kandinsky taught for a while & later accepted a post as the director of the photographic section of a Moscow printer.

Composition IV - 1911

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In 1895, the year before he turned 30, he attended an impressionist exhibit, which influenced his work. See Odessa Port above.

Composition V - 1911

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On display were works by Manet, Degas, and Renoir, but the piece that inspired him the most was Monet’s Haystacks at Giverny.

Influencer

Claude Monet - Haystacks at Giverny - 1884

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Improvisation Deluge - 1913

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He hated the out-of-focus aspect of Monet’s Haystacks at Giverny, and how the haystack hardly seemed there.

Lady with Flower - 1917 - Glass painting

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While not wholly successful, I love seeing his experimentation in this painting, it is almost like he was trying his hand at surrealism.

Ship - 1918 - Reverse glass painting

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Composition #218 (Two Ovals)
1919

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Composition #224 (On white)
1920

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In 1896, he turned down a professorship in jurisprudence at the University of Dorpat (later called Tartu), in Estonia.

White Zig-Zag - 1922

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Instead he jumped on a train headed for Germany with the intention of becoming a painter. Good decision!

Composition VIII - 1923

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In Germany he enrolled in a private school in Munich run by Anton Azbé.

Black and Violet - 1923

About Anton Azbé:
britannica.com/biography/Wass…

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Two years of study under Azbé were followed by his enrollment at the Munich Academy in the class of Franz von Stuck.

Circles in a Circle - 1923

About Franz von Stuck:
britannica.com/biography/Fran…

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Kandinsky graduated in 1900 and during the next few years, achieved moderate success.

Black Relationship - 1924

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Black Accompaniment - 1924

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Capricious Line - 1924

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Quiet Pink - 1924

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Starting from a base in 19th-century realism, he was influenced by Impressionism & by the decorative effects of Art Nouveau (called Jugendstil in Germany).

Above and Left - 1925

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He was also intrigued by Pointillism and by the vivid unrealistic color of central European Expressionism and French Fauvism, which you can see clearly in his 1908 to 1913 work.

Swinging - 1925

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He exhibited with various groups that had emerged all over Europe, such as Berlin Sezession, the Paris Salon d’Automne & Salon des Indépendants.

Several Circles - 1926

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In 1902 he became president of the Munich Phalanx group.

Soft Hard
1927

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Kandinsky led the Dresden group that called itself Die Brücke (“The Bridge”).
#GermanExpressionism

Launelinie - 1927
Watercolor & Indian ink on paper

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In 1903 in Moscow he had his first one-man show, followed the next year by two others in Poland.

Divided - 1928
Watercolor, Indian ink & pencil on paper

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Between 1903 and 1908 he traveled extensively, from Holland to as far south as Tunisia & from Paris back to Russia.

Crossing - 1928 - Pompidou, Paris

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In 1909 he began the process that led to the emergence of his personal style which led to the historic breakthrough of purely abstract painting.

Image with Arrow - 1928

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Kandinsky’s impulse to eliminate subject matter altogether was not due to strictly aesthetic considerations.

Upward - 1929, Guggenheim, Venice

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He embraced an aesthetic in which colors, lines, & shapes, freed from the distracting business of depicting recognizable objects.

Disintegrated Tension - 1930

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Kandinsky is often misidentified as a Supremacist, but his complex & vivid aesthetic does not adhere to their strict rules of austerity.

Gloomy Situation - 1933
His work in the early 30s mirrors his depression.

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Objects that evolve into a visual “language” of music, expressing general ideas & yet evoking deep emotions.

Striped - 1934

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Kandinsky considered compositions as main declarations of his artistic ideas.

Violet-Orange - 1935
Oil on canvas - (Happier now)

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“Just as symphonies are milestones in the career of a composer, the compositions of Kandinsky represent the culmination of his artistic vision at every moment of his creative career.”

Composition IX - 1936

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"From the very outset," the artist wrote, "that one word "composition" sounded to me like a prayer." The first composition dates from 1910, the last one from 1939.

Silent - 1937

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Kandinsky was by no means alone in his attack on figurative art.

The opening - 1938 - Gouache

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By 1909 the Cubists were turning out fragmented visions of reality that at the time baffled & ‘offended’ the art world.

Composition X - 1939

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Between 1910 & 1914 the list of pioneer abstract artists included many creative painters engaged in challenging established aesthetic norms & rules.

Untitled - 1940 - Gouache

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While Kandinsky may not be the “founder” of nonfigurative painting, he remains a significant pioneer of abstract art.

Untitled - 1941 - Gouache

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At Rest - 1942

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Three Pillars - 1943

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Composition - 1944

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Tempered Élan - 1944

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Additional reading:
widewalls.ch/artist/wassily…

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Excellent catalog of Kandinsky’s work and much more: wassilykandinsky.net/painting1896-1…

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If you like this check out

#PopArt, #GermanExpressionism, #PreRaphaelites, #Dadaism #Surrealism. #Bauhaus & #AshCanSchool #Fauvism #Futurism #Vorticism #Supremacism

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🌀#Kandinsky🌀

Also please check out:

#MaxfieldParrish #JohnSingerSargent
#DavidHockney

Up next?

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unroll please & thank you.