Wassily Kandinsky Wall Art Prints

Only a few others were perhaps as popular in the creation of abstract art during the 19^th and 2th century as Wassily Kandinsky. A Russian painter and art theorist, Kandinsky was born in Moscow in December 1866. Today, he is regarded as one of the first artists to bring pure abstraction into modern painting.

A Look at Kandinsky’s Early Childhood
 
Kandinsky’s parents got divorced during his early childhood and he moved to Odessa to live with an aunt. He learned drawing during these years and used certain color combinations in his art to express what he felt. He later studied law at the University of Moscow in 1886 and graduated with honors. 

However, after a visit to a French exhibition of Impressionists in Moscow and after hearing Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre, Kandinsky abandoned his career in law. He was especially inspired by Monet’s “Haystacks in Giverny”. 

Kandinsky got into the Munich Academy of Arts and started studying about the conventional themes and art forms. He later studied how color can be an expression of emotion. However, most of his paintings for the school included landscapes and towns. Some of his works from the time are “Sunday, Old Russia” and “Riding Couple”.

 
Kandinsky’s Work 

One of the most ground-breaking paintings of that era is “The Blue Rider” that shows a cloaked rider on a horse as a series of colors. A lot of art historians interpreted that the cloaked man may be hiding something underneath. Kandinsky used this technique to make the viewers participate in art.

Kandinsky was inspired by music – believing it is abstract by nature and can be used to express emotions. He wanted to bring the same abstraction in his work and thus, formed the Blue Rider group with like-minded artists. During his later years, he tried to bring in more ‘order’ into his work, focusing more on geometric figures and noticeable compositional balance. The World War I put an end to the exhibits the group had planned but Kandinsky’s treatise “On the Spiritual in Art” had an international impact. His work was singled out and praised, especially in Britain.

He later taught Bauhaus in Germany and became interested in the idea of using geometrical shapes in his pieces. He sometimes mixed sand with his paints to give his color a more granular effect. He did his final major compositions named Composition IX and Composition X in the late 1930s. He died of cerebrovascular disease in France in 1944.