Artist to Know - Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wasilyevich Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

He was born on December, 16, 1866 in Moscow. As a child he learned to play the piano, cello, and to draw. In Kandinsky's works of his childhood period you can find rather specific color combinations, which he explained by the fact that "each color lives by its mysterious life".

He went to school to become a lawyer and graduated with honors. He became a professor teaching law, and when he was awarded professor of the Law Department he turned it down to paint.

Kandinsky is generally considered to be the pioneer of abstract painting. The early years were basically landscapes, based on color discords. The play of color, spots, and lines, was gradually superseding images of reality.

Through a fluid blend of calligraphic lines and amorphous shapes, the artist expresses a sense of growing detachment from nature. The emphasis is on mood and harmony and reveals Kandinsky's fascination with the relationship between colour and music.

He was one of the most influential artist of his generation and an important art theorist. "Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with "reality," next to the "real" world. Deeper down, it is subject to the common laws of the "cosmic world." And so a "new world of art" is juxtaposed to the "world of nature." This "world of art" is just as real, just as concrete. For this reason I prefer to call so-called "abstract art" "concrete art." Wassily Kandinsky.

See all of his art and read more about Kandinsky at http://www.wassilykandinsky.net