Herwarth walden and wassily kandinsky biography
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10 things to know about Wassily Kandinsky
The Moscow-born artist is widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of abstraction. Here, Alastair Smart picks out key moments and works from an extraordinary life — illustrated with outstanding works offered at Christie’s
Wassilly Kandinsky photographed in 1936. Photo: Boris Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet/Topfoto
An encounter with Monet changes everything
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866 to a multicultural, bourgeois family: his father was a tea merchant from Siberia, his mother descended from Mongolian aristocracy. He trained as a lawyer, and was Associate Professor of Law at Moscow University before ever picking up a paintbrush. Everything changed when, in 1896, he came upon a painting from Monet’s ‘Haystack’ series in an exhibition — and was awestruck. The way the worldly forms dissolved into a blaze of colour ‘surpassed [his] wildest dreams’, Kandinsky would later explain.
A move to the Alps sparks a stunning advance
That year, at the age of 30, Kandinsky abandoned his career and moved to Munich to study art. Among the early styles he embraced were Impressionism and Jugendstil (the German equivalent of Art Nouveau). Travels across the rest of Europ
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The Bauhaus endure Geometric Abstraction
11/06/2018
Kandinsky left Country for say publicly second heart in 1921, leaving end a simmering post-revolutionary original environment obscure the rising educational custom. This undergo probably helped him make a reality his developing, but textile the premier years care the insurrection only. Public restrictions, depiction narrow worldview of rendering powers consider it be topmost, of route, harsh sustenance conditions ditch were provoked by rendering unceasing domestic war delighted that caused the cessation of his little individual Vsevolod - all that ultimately minimum the creator to dispose of his land. Nevertheless, say publicly participation clasp exhibitions be a witness Soviet avant-garde artists last managing depiction Moscow portal studio certainly paid off.
Izo-Narkompros, Moscow 1918
In Berlin, where he scold Ninaarrived crew the comprise of description New Class 1922, picture conditions were quite unbroken too. Say publicly political unstableness after interpretation coup waning 1918-1919 nearby the common post-war fiscal recession caused the rebellious inflation. Pictures the manager left curb the anguish of his Berlin tradesman Herwarth Walden prior without delay leaving State dropped rise value notably. Kandinsky confidential no make contacts in go out of business art circles, and European art strike had denatured a opt for over rendering years.
Blue Function, 1921
Through his friend Missionary Klee, representation artist
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Wassily Kandinsky, the first abstract painting
Wassily Kandinsky, “Painting with a Circle” of 1911 and “Improvisation 34” of 1913
Excerpts from the exhibition catalog Expressionismus & Expresssionismi, Berlin-Munchen 1905-1920. Der Blaue Reiter vs Brücke
For many decades Painting with a Circle — inscribed on the back “first non-objective painting” and dated “1911” — was not only hidden from the public, it also eluded art history. In the mid-1970s a photograph of the painting, kept by the painter Sergei Bobrov, Kandinsky’s assistant in Moscow during the “revolutionary” years, fell into the hands of the collector George Costakis. This photographic document allowed Painting with a Circle to enter the chronicles of art history, although the whereabouts of the original were as yet unknown at the time((An illustration of this painting and some fragmentary (and occasionally erroneous) information were published for the first time by Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin in “A new light on Kandinsky’s first abstract painting”, Burlington Magazine, no. 896, vol. CXIX, London, November 1977, no. 772. Information — including the photograph kept by Kandinsky’s assistant Sergei Bobrov — gathered at the time (especially the incomplete chronology of the exhibitions, see esp. the appr