Vasily Kandinsky
(1866-1944)

Kandinsky came from a family of merchants Nerchinsk, the descendants of convicts. In childhood traveling with her parents in European countries and Russia. In 1871 the family settled in Odessa, where the future artist graduated from high school (1876-85). In 1885-93 (with a break in 1889-91) studied law at Moscow University. In 1889 he traveled with the ethnographic expedition of the Vologda province, where in-depth acquaintance with ancient iconography and folk art.

Around 1895 gave up the career of a university professor and devoted himself to art. In 1897 he entered the school Aschbe in Munich in 1900, he studied under F. Stuck at the Royal Academy of Arts. In the early 1900's. Kandinsky traveled extensively in Europe and North Africa, came to Russia, but the resident has chosen Munich (1902-1908), then the village of Murnau in the Bavarian Alps.

The period of early work

in the early works of Kandinsky-kind experience served as the basis for creating the bright colorful landscapes, sometimes romantic and symbolic workload stories ("The Blue Rider", 1903). The middle and the second half of the 1900s. were marked hobbies Russian antiquity, in the paintings of "The Song of the Volga" (1906), "colorful life" (1907), "Rock" (1909), the artist combined the rhythmic and decorative features of Russian and German Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) with pointillism techniques and stylization People splint. As part of the work developed Kandinsky retrospective fantasy inherent masters circle "World of Art" ("ladies in crinolines," Oil, 1909, Tretyakov Gallery). Artist synthetic stock, Kandinsky also worked in the fields of arts and crafts (sketches of women's jewelry, furniture fittings), plastics (modeling in clay), experimented with painting on glass.

The emergence of abstract works

in 1910 created the first abstract work, and wrote a treatise entitled "On the Spiritual in Art" (published in 1912 in German, Russian variant fragments were read NI Kulbin in December 1911 by the All-Russian Congress of Artists in St. Petersburg). Put forward as a fundamental foundation of the spiritual content of his art, Kandinsky believed that the hidden inner meaning can be expressed most fully in the compositions, organized on the basis of rhythm, mental and physical effects of color, contrasts of dynamics and statics.

Abstract paintings by the artist are grouped into three cycles: "Impressions", "Improvisations" and "Compositions". The rhythm, the emotional impact of color, energy lines and spots of his oil paintings were intended to express the strong lyrical sense, similar to the senses, awakens the music, poetry, pictures of beautiful landscapes. The carrier of the inner feelings of a non-objective compositions of Kandinsky became coloristic and compositional orchestration, implemented pictorial means - color, point, line, spot the plane, contrasting clash of colorful spots.

Much attention is paid graphics artist, particularly woodcut. Expressive figurative graphic compositions decorated German book of poems Kandinsky "Sounds" (1913).

Member of many Russian and European exhibitions, the artist was able to consolidate like-minded people. In 1901, he created the group in Munich "Phalanx", in 1909 led the "New Art Society - Munich", in 1911 initiated the emergence of the "Blue Rider". In the first anthology "Blue Rider" (1912) was placed stage composition Kandinsky "Yellow Sound" to music by FA Hartman - being staged, designed to synthesize the organic unity of color, light, movement, and music (not held because of the outbreak 1 World War II).

In 1913, in Berlin, a book by Kandinsky "Painting as a pure art" in German, and an album of his works (1901-1913).

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