Artists Series, page 3: Kandinsky, part 2

As I showed you yesterday, Kandinsky did not start off as a painter and when he did he did not start as an abstract painter. He started by painting fauve style landscapes. But little by little the power of the colour began to replace the need to be so figurative. «The Blue Mountain» begins to demonstrate that transition, if you will, from figurative to abstraction…

Wassily’s grandmother was from the aristocracy and Mongolian and his mother was from Moscow. His childhood was spent between Moscow and Odessa and in that city, where the moved to in 1871, he studied piano and cello…

In 1901, having moved to Munich, he founded the group Phalanx. This was basically a group of artists that had joined together to bring to Munich the vanguards of art from Paris. In 1902 he exhibits for the first time in Berlin. Then in 1904 he exhibited in the Salon d’Automne (an exhibition celebrated yearly in Paris since 1903).

«The Blue Rider» was one of his most important paintings of the early part of the XXth Century. It is believed by some art historians that there is a second figure, perhaps a child, that the rider is holding tight. Or it could only be a shadow. But this intentional ambiguity, allowing the observer to actually complete the work, became something Kandinsky used in other works subsequently and which reached its peak in the abstract period of 1911-1914. As you might notice, the rider is nothing more than splotches of colour and lacks any specific details. This painting indicates the route Kandinsky would take with his art soon enough.

In 1911, together with Franz Marc and other artists, Kandinsky founded an expressionist/expressionism movement in Munich and called it Der Blau Reiter (The Blue Rider). This movement transformed German expressionism.

This is one of the fundamental parts of his career as a thinker and as a painter. For me it is one of the things that make him a reference as I consider myself an expressionist artist. The other is abstract art, which I love and which I am practicing to develop. In other words, Kandinsky is still teaching me to reach out and become a fuller, more complete artist. So his influence for me is dual, on the one side the study of colour and forms in the creation of abstract art and the other is the philosophical/spiritual aspects of art which to me are implacable and most needed.

PART THREE IS COMING IN THE NEXT EDITION OF ARTISTS SERIES

CHEERS…