Kandinsky, Wassily, << kan DIHN skee,VAS uh lee >> (1866-1944), was a Russian artist. He is generally considered to have discovered abstract painting, which has no recognizable subject. Kandinsky believed that painting—like music—is primarily a form of personal expression, rather than a way to tell a story or express an idea.
Kandinsky was born on Dec. 16, 1866 (December 4 on the old Russian calendar then in use) in Moscow. He moved to Munich, Germany, in 1896. In 1911, he and the German artist Franz Marc founded an expressionist art movement called Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). During this period, Kandinsky painted with bright, pure colors in a free, spontaneous style. His ideas on the expressive qualities of color and form appear in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912).
During World War I (1914-1918), Kandinsky returned to Russia and was a teacher in Moscow. In 1921, he moved back to Germany and his art changed dramatically. His paintings became more ordered, geometric, and completely abstract. From 1922 to 1933, he taught the theory of form at the Bauhaus school of design in Germany. He described his ideas from this period in his book Point and Line to Plane (1926). He died on Dec. 13, 1944. Kandinsky’s paintings and theories made him a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionist movement that flourished in New York City during the 1940’s and 1950’s.
