16 Dec 1866
Born Vasily Kandinsky — one of the leaders of avant-garde art and the founder of abstract art. A synesthete with the ability to perceive sounds. An artist whose paintings sell at auction for tens of millions of dollars.
Color is the key; the eye is the hammer; the soul is the many-stringed piano. The artist is the hand that, through this or that key, purposefully sets the human soul into vibration.
He was born into a wealthy family. When he was little, he traveled extensively throughout Russia and Europe. In 1871, he settled in Odessa, Ukraine — My father managed a tea factory there. He attended high school, played the piano and cello, and took drawing lessons, surprising his teacher with unusual color combinations and explaining that everyone "lives their own mysterious life."
In painting, every color is intrinsically beautiful, for every color evokes a spiritual vibration, and every vibration enriches the soul.
At the age of 20 he left for Moscow — at his parents' insistence, he studied law and economics. He graduated with honors from law school. He stayed at the university to "prepare for a professorship." He got married and got a job as art director at the publishing house of Kushnerev. And at 30, he decided to make a radical change in his life.
It happened in 1896, after two shocks—a Wagner opera and a Monet painting. The music of Lohengrin suddenly took on a vivid, colorful quality for Kandinsky:
Violins, deep basses and, above all, wind instruments embodied in my perception the full force of the pre-evening hour <> Frantic, almost insane lines were drawn before me
And “Haystack” revolutionized the concept of painting – Kandinsky, educated in a realistic manner Polenova и Levitan, At first I was very irritated by the “unclearness” of the picture:
I had a vague feeling that this painting lacked a subject. With surprise and embarrassment, however, I noticed that this painting was exciting and captivating. <> Deep down, the subject was simultaneously discredited as a necessary element of the painting.
Later, non-objectivity would become the main principle of Kandinsky’s work.
I went to study painting Munich. Studied at Anton Azhbe's studio, according to a fellow student's recollections Igor Grabar, He was fascinated by exercises in "purity of color." He then entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he suffered from the conservatism there.
What seems illusory today will become natural tomorrow.
In 1901, he founded the creative association "Phalanx" and opened a school attached to it, where he taught. At the same time, the 35-year-old artist became involved with a 26-year-old student. Gabriele Munter - he will live with her in a civil marriage (despite the divorce from his first wife) for more than 10 years, and she will retain a significant part of his inheritance.
In 1903, he painted "The Blue Rider," his first abstract painting. In 1911, together with the expressionist Franz Marc, he founded the artistic group of the same name. "The Blue Rider" aimed to liberate itself from the "obsolete traditions" of academic painting.
There can be no perfect form without perfect content: spirit determines matter, not vice versa
He outlined his theory of abstractionism in his book "On the Spiritual in Art." Form and color are the primary expressions of ideas. But while form can exist independently, color cannot expand infinitely. White is the "great silence," harboring new possibilities. Black is a silence without hope or future. Green is static, red is dynamic. Gray is "hopeless immobility."
It all starts with a dot
During the First World War, he returned to Russia. At the age of 50, he married a 23-year-old woman. To Nina Andreevskaya. After 1917, he spent some time engaged in public activities, taught, and even became vice-president of the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences. But in 1921, he left for Berlin and never returned to the USSR.
When the Nazis came to power, he left Germany. In 1937, his paintings were among 650 works by impressionists, cubists, and surrealists confiscated from German museums at the “Degenerate Art” exhibition.
He died in 1944 in the suburbs. Paris.
Kandinsky's paintings are currently among the most expensive works by Russian artists. In 2017, at a Sotheby's auction, two paintings sold for record-breaking prices in 22 minutes. 68,7 million dollars.