Wassily Kandinsky

Avant-garde painter of Russian origin (1866-1944)

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Lived 1866–1944, aged 78France

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Era
1866–1944
Aged 78

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He cracked open painting itself — took away the objects, the landscapes, the faces, and left only color and form answering to something internal. Before Kandinsky, Western art depicted the world; after him, it could depict feeling directly.

Biography

About

Born in Moscow in 1866, Kandinsky didn't pick up a brush in earnest until thirty, abandoning a law career for art school in Munich in 1896. He studied under Anton Ažbe and at the Academy of Fine Arts, eventually teaching — then living with — German painter Gabriele Münter. World War I pulled him back to Moscow in 1914, and after the Revolution he worked inside Anatoly Lunacharsky's cultural administration, helping found the Museum of the Culture of Painting. But his spiritual bent sat poorly with Soviet materialism, so he returned to Germany in 1920 and taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 until th…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

said1912

[Their] things [works of Die Brücke-artists] must be exhibited.

— Quote from his letter to Franz Marc, 2 Febr. 1912, as cited in 'Lankheit 20'; quoted in Movement, Manifesto, Melee: The Modernist Group,

Wassily Kandinsky

said1912

If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf.

— Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London

Wassily Kandinsky

said18 Jan 1911

In your [ composer Schönberg's ] works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music.

— in his letter to Arnold Schönberg, 18 Jan. 1911; as cited in Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by

Wassily Kandinsky

said18 Jan 1911

At the moment there is a great tendency in painting to discover the 'new' harmony by constructive means whereby the rhythmic is built on an almost geometric form..

— Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Arnold Schönberg, 18 Jan. 1911; as cited in Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus

Wassily Kandinsky

said1911

[ Schoenberg's ] music leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone, and at this point the music of the future begins.

— Quote of Kandinsky, 1911; in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, transl. Michael T. Sadler (1914); reprint. New York: Dover, 1977), p. 17

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