The Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky, b. Dec. 4 (N.S.), 1866, d. Dec. 13, 1944, is often regarded as the originator of ABSTRACT ART. Although interested in painting from an early age, he did not become a full-time artist until 1896, when he abandoned a legal career to study painting in Munich. Trips to Paris familiarized him with neoimpressionism and the work of Paul Gauguin and the Fauves. In 1907 he exhibited with the German expressionist group Die BRUCKE, and in 1909 he founded the New Association of Munich Artists. In 1910, Kandinsky executed his first abstract painting and wrote his famous theoretical study Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), developing his ideas about nonrepresentational painting, the psychological power of pure color, and the analogy between art and music. In 1911, Kandinsky, with August Macke, Franz Marc, and, later, Paul Klee, founded Der BLAUE REITER group. During the same year Kandinsky and Marc published their theories of abstract art and in December 1911 and February 1912 held exhibitions of their work.
After spending some time in Switzerland, Kandinsky returned (1914) to
Moscow, where he taught and organized numerous artistic activities.
He moved (1921) to Germany once again and became a teacher at the Bauhaus
in 1925. In 1926 he wrote Point and Line to Plane, an analysis of
geometric forms in art. During this decade Kandinsky's painting evolved
from the more expressionistic and highly colored improvisations of his
early work toward more precisely drawn and geometrically arranged compositions.
When the Bauhaus was closed (1933) by the Nazis, Kandinsky moved to Paris,
where he lived for the rest of his life. His later works are arrangements
of organically shaped forms resembling microscopic creatures. Kandinsky's
paintings and theoretical writings exercised a strong influence on the
subsequent development of modern art, especially on the development of
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.