Kandinsky is credited with painting the first abstract works. His love of color, and intensity of color is obvious, especially in his earlier landscapes, such as the bottom image above, “Winter Landscape” from 1909. (I’ll get this blogging figured out someday! Until then, please pardon the placement!) I can see the impressionistic influence in this piece, can’t you? The second (from the bottom) image is of a landscape that he painted in 1913, just 4 years later..I posted it so that you could see his artistic progression in a short time.
He started painting when he was 30 years old. He was a resident of either Germany or Russia over many years, but eventually decided to live out his life in France. He became a citizen in 1939.
While in Germany, Wassily taught at the Bauhaus School of Art, a school concerned with architecture, the use of plastics, industrial fabrication and manufacture. He worked there from 1922 to 1933, when it was closed by the Nazis. During this time his work became more angular and geometric as can be witnessed in the image included above at the top (location, location!). As you can see, Wassily used many different geometric shapes and lines, employing repetition, bright, more dominant colors and lots of energy contrasting with a softer more flowing background. In viewing this painting I am reminded that Kandinsky plotted his artwork almost as if it was a musical composition. Indeed he had a theory that painting a work was akin to composing music. The layout has a logical progression to it, which helps the eye of the viewer to move around the parts of the painting, finally taking in the whole composition.
Kandinsky was a deep thinker. He had theories about art. I will talk about those tomorrow…
…to be continued…
