Wassily biography

(1866-1944)

Who Was Wassily Kandinsky?

Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to study drawing and painting. A trained musician, Kandinsky approached color with a musician’s sensibility. An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative concepts of color on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract art movement in the early 20th century.

Early Life

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow on December 4, 1866 (December 16 by the Gregorian calendar), to musical parents Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. When Kandinsky was about 5 years old, his parents divorced, and he moved to Odessa to live with an aunt, where he learned to play the piano and cello in grammar school, as well as study drawing with a coach. Even as a boy he had an intimate experience with art; the works of his childhood reveal rather specific color combinations, infused by his perception that "each color lives by its mysterious life."

Although he later wrote, "I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality," he followed his family’s wishes to go into law, entering the University of Moscow in 1886. He graduated with honors, but his ethnographic earned him a fieldwork scholarship that entailed a visit to the Vologda province to study their traditional criminal jurisprudence and religion. The folk art there and the spiritual study seemed to stir latent longings. Still, Kandinsky married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina, in 1892 and took up a position on the Moscow Faculty of Law, managing an art-printing works on the side.

But two events effected his abrupt change of career in 1896: seeing an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow the previous year, especially Claude Monet's Haystacks at Giverny, which was his first experience of nonr

Biography Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Early Life

Wassily Kandinsky was born into a wealthy family of merchants in Moscow in 1866. His parents divorced when he was five-years-old and he spent most of his childhood in Odessa.

In 1892, he married his cousin, Anna Chimyakina, and accepted a position teaching law at the university in Moscow. In letters and interviews, Kandinsky always talked about his early life and how he was deeply influenced by music and colors. Some scholars believe that the artist was a synesthete, an individual who synthesizes color and sounds simultaneously. Eventually, the pull on Kandinsky’s artistic inclinations overwhelmed him. At the age of 30, he enrolled in art school in Munich.

Germany

Kandinsky’s wife had never intended to marry an artist, so the couple eventually split. They did not officially divorce until 1911, but Kandinsky began a live-in affair with Gabriele Münter. A single woman living with a still-married man caused quite the scandal, but the relationship continued until the outbreak of WWI.

The artist made waves with his radical thinking and never-before-seen abstract forms. He founded the group Der Blaue Reiter (named for his iconic painting of 1903) and wrote his first treatise titled, On the Spiritual in Art. His paintings were well-received and he enjoyed international success at exhibitions in England and the United States.

Return to Russia

When WWI broke out in Europe, Kandinsky moved back to Russia. He was not a very prolific painter at this time, but chose to focus his efforts instead on art reform. He oversaw the organization of 22 Russian museums and was named Commissariat of Popular Culture.

He also taught theoretical classes at the University of Moscow and founded the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At the age of 50, he married his 17-year-old student, Nina Andreievskaya. The couple had one son, but he died tragically at just three-years-old.

Bauhaus

At the beginning of the 1920s, Kandinsky w

Russian painter and art theorist (1866–1944)

"Kandinsky" redirects here. For other uses, see Kandinsky (disambiguation).

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Wassilyevich and the family name is Kandinsky.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia). Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky "became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky" and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then, "his spiritual outlook... was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society" and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Early life

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. One of his great-grandmothers was Princess Gantimurova

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia). Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky "became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky" and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then, "his spiritual outlook... was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society" and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.