| Biography of old oil painting master Kandinsky Wassily what we can copy |
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Kandinsky Wassily
Russian in full VASILY VASILYEVICH
KANDINSKY
(b. Dec. 4 [Dec. 16, New Style], 1866,
Moscow, Russia--d. Dec. 13, 1944,
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Fr.)
Russian-born artist |
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One of the first creators of
pure ab straction in modern painting. After
successful avant-garde exhibitions,
Kandinsky Wassily founded the influential Munich group Der
Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider; 1911-14) and
began completely abstract painting. His
forms evolved from fluid and organic to
geometric and, finally, to pictographic (
e.g., Tempered Élan, 1944).
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994
Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician,
once said Color is the keyboard, the eyes
are the harmonies, the soul is the piano
with many strings. The artist is the hand
that plays, touching one key or another, to
cause vibrations in the soul. The concept
that color and musical harmony are linked
has a long history, intriguing scientists
such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used
color in a highly theoretical way
associating tone with timbre (the sound's
character), hue with pitch, and saturation
with the volume of sound. Kandinsky Wassily even claimed
that when Kandinsky Wassily saw color
Kandinsky Wassily heard music.
Born in Moscow in 1866, Kandinsky spent his
early childhood in Odessa. His parents
played the piano and the zither and
Kandinsky himself learned the piano and
cello at an early age. The influence of
music in his paintings cannot be overstated,
down to the names of his paintings
Improvisations, Impressions, and
Compositions. In 1886, Kandinsky Wassily enrolled at the
University of Moscow, chose to study law and
economics, and after passing his
examinations, lectured at the Moscow Faculty
of Law. Kandinsky Wassily enjoyed success not only as a
teacher but also wrote extensively on
spirituality, a subject that remained of
great interest and ultimately exerted
substantial influence in his work. In 1895
Kandinsky attended a French Impressionist
exhibition where Kandinsky Wassily saw Monet's Haystacks at
Giverny. Kandinsky Wassily stated, "It was from the catalog
I learned this was a haystack. I was upset I
had not recognized it. I also thought the
painter had no right to paint in such an
imprecise fashion. Dimly I was aware too
that the object did not appear in the
picture..." Soon thereafter, at the age of
thirty, Kandinsky left Moscow and went to
Munich to study life-drawing, sketching and
anatomy, regarded then as basic for an
artistic education. |
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Ironically, Kandinsky's work moved in a
direction that was of much greater
abstraction than that which was pioneered by
the Impressionists. It was not long before
his talent surpassed the constraints of art
school and Kandinsky Wassily began exploring his own ideas
of painting - "I applied streaks and blobs
of colors onto the canvas with a palette
knife and I made them sing with all the
intensity I could..." Now considered to be
the founder of abstract art, his work was
exhibited throughout Europe from 1903
onwards, and often caused controversy among
the public, the art critics, and his
contemporaries. |
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An active participant in several of the most
influential and controversial art movements
of the 20th century, among them the Blue
Rider which Kandinsky Wassily founded along with Franz Marc
and the Bauhaus which also attracted Klee,
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), and Schonberg,
Kandinsky continued to further express and
define his form of art, both on canvas and
in his theoretical writings. His reputation
became firmly established in the United
State s through numerous exhbitions and his
work was introduced to Solomon Guggenheim,
who became one of his most enthusiastic
supporters.
In 1933, Kandinsky left Germany and settled
near Paris, in Neuilly. The paintings from
these later years were again the subject of
controversy. Though out of favor with many
of the patriarchs of Paris's artistic
community, younger artists admired
Kandinsky. His studio was visited regularly
by Miro, Arp, Magnelli and Sophie Tauber.
Kandinsky continued painting almost until
his death in June, 1944. his unrelenting
quest for new forms which carried him to the
very extremes of geometric abstraction have
provided us with an unparalleled collection
of abstract art. |
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