Wassily Kandinsky's Accomplishments

Wassily Kandinsky became a painter rather late in life. It is only after finishing his studies at the University of Moscow, in his early thirties and completely mature that he decides to fully commit to art. This important decision would change his life. However, neither himself nor his social and artistic circle, could then assume he would encounter a decisive step fifteen years later. The transition to the non-figurative art where he would create his famous Improvisations and Compositions that created his fame. Kandinsky was one of the rare painters of the 20th Century who not only had flourished in such a heavy political environment but also, whose creations escaped any explanations. Only a few influential artists actually succeeded …show more content…
An important part of Kandinsky’s life was spent in Odessa a cosmopolitan city populated by mainly Western Europeans and other ethnic groups. At an early age, he expressed an uncommon sensitivity towards sound, word and colors – in other words, the arts. His father encouraged what he perceived as a gift and pushed him into drawing and music lessons. Despite early exposure to the arts, Kandinsky did not make it a priority in his life until much later and first achieved his law studies at the University of Moscow. He later decided to abandon his law career to attend art school in Munich in 1896 where he was introduced to the artistic avant-garde by Alexei Jawlensky and others. In 1901, with the help of three other young artists, Kandinsky co-founded “Phalanx” an artists’ association opposed to the conservative views of the traditional art institutions. He will then meet Gabriele Münter – one of his students – becoming his companion with whom he will spend the next fifteen years. In 1903, he will close the “Phalanx” school and will travel throughout Europe with Münter where he will familiarize himself with the growing Expressionist movement and develop his own style based on his different artistic sources he witnessed during his …show more content…
A change in style was apparent, nevertheless, it is difficult to differentiate between innovation and culmination of past tendencies. While in Paris, he will be choosing larger canvases, using more biomorphic forms, adding sand to his oil paintings and introducing new hues into his palette (Barnett). In a certain respect, his first Paris paintings will be a continuation of his work at the Bauhaus that he will take further and modify; for instance “Accompanied Center” was transformed from a watercolor to a major painting. During his Paris period, Kandinsky continued to write, limiting himself to shorter texts expressing familiar points of view on the correspondence between painting and music as he states in “L’Art Concret”, or his belief in abstract art which he now preferred to call “concrete art” in “Abstract Concrete”. He will also be rather isolated, as impressionism and cubism dominated the artistic scene at that time, and his geometric abstract paintings will receive suspicion and would not be recognized before some time. Nonetheless, he played an important role in the philosophic foundation for later modern movements, in particular abstract expressionism and its variants like color field painting. His work had a large influence on artists such as Gorky (which also helped shape the New York School’s aesthetic), but was also of interest to Pollock, Rothko and