Delphi Complete Works of Wassily Kandinsky US (Illustrated) (Masters of Art Book 12) by Wassily Kandinsky

Delphi Complete Works of Wassily Kandinsky US (Illustrated) (Masters of Art Book 12) Reviews

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  Classic reverie

  I had never heard of Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky before and I can not remember if I had seen his works of art. I did not read his treatise included in this book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" but would like to revisit here when ready to do so. I thought I was not really a fan of Impressionistic Art but I found that it varies with the artist and his works so I can no longer make that blanket statement, and as I go forward to different artistic work, I will comment. My favorite so far are Turner and Monet, I suppose because their works stay closer to reality of what they are painting. I did find many works that I loved of Kandinsky but far too many had me confounded, though many are colorful which is enjoyable, yet I could not relate. So looking at these works which seemed farther from art in my mind, I was amazed at his earlier works and how it showed his talent, like "Odessa Port". I tell you my opinions but who am I but one who judges with a truly novice eye and can not see what others see.
  
  
  
  I added a fair amount of quotes which I thought interesting about his life.
  
  
  "Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. During his school years he was interested in many subjects, including law and economics. In later years, the artist recalled his early fascination and stimulated interest in colour, which later developed through concepts of colour symbolism and psychology. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Though successful in this profession, to the extent that he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat, Kandinsky was much more interested in painting studies, including life-drawing, sketching and anatomy."
  
  "In 1896, at the age of 30, he took the surprising step of giving up a promising career teaching law and economics to enrol in an art school in Munich. At first he was not granted official admission and had to begin learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Claude Monet. "
  
  "Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) was a German expressionist painter at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She came from an upper middle-class background and her parents supported her wish to become an artist. Münter took classes at Munich’s progressive new Phalanx School, where she studied woodcut techniques, sculpture, painting and printmaking. Soon after she began taking classes, Münter became attached to Kandinsky, who was the Phalanx School’s director. He was the first teacher that had actually taken Münter’s painting abilities seriously. In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited her to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted and their relationship became intimate. Kandinsky and Münter’s professional and personal relationship lasted for twelve years and Kandinsky was married while he was with Münter."
  
  "In 1911 Kandinsky, Münter and Franz Marc founded the Expressionist group known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied amongst artists, though they shared the common desire to express spiritual truths through art. They championed modern art, the connection between visual art and music, the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting in its move towards abstraction. "
  
  "Der Blaue Reiter organised exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany. They also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with children’s paintings. In 1913 they exhibited in the first German Herbstsalon. The group was disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat. Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky were forced to move back to Russia because of their Russian citizenship. There were also differences in opinion within the group. As a result, Der Blaue Reiter was short-lived, lasting for only three years from 1911 to 1914. "
  
  "In 1889, Kandinsky was part of an ethnographic research group that travelled to the Vologda region, north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience and his studies of the region’s folk art, principally the use of bright colours on a dark background, inspired many of his early canvases. A few years later, Kandinsky would famously compare painting as composing music: “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”
  
  "When Germany declared war on Russia in 1914, Kandinsky was forced to leave Munich and his German companion Münter to return to Moscow. He lamented: “Of the 16 years that I have been living in Germany, I have given myself entirely to the German art world. How am I now suddenly supposed to feel myself a foreigner?” Aged 50, he was starting a new life and the move to Moscow marked a profound break. The year 1915 was a time of depression and self-doubt, during which he did not paint a single picture. "
  
  
  
  
  "Kandinsky’s Compositions VI and VII are devoted to the themes of the Flood and the Last Judgment; they must be seen in the context of the atmosphere of fervent eschatological expectation on the eve of World War I. "
  
  
  "for the artist. As the son of a tea merchant, he had been independently wealthy, but after the Russian Revolution, during which a Communist system replaced the Tsarist rule, Kandinsky lost his property during a land redistribution. Consequently, his plans to build a large studio took second place to financial concerns such as selling work and finding employment. World War I and then the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 slowed his artistic production, partly due to a lack of funds, but also due to his work organising art institutions for the newly formed government. "
  
  "Due to his artistic isolation and wartime privations, Kandinsky made the decision to leave Russia in 1921, never to return. "
  In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius. The Bauhaus was an art school that combined crafts and the fine arts, which in time became famous for its approach to design that it publicised and instructed. Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. "
  
  "This period was intensely productive. Kandinsky was to teach at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. "
  
  
  My favorites -
  The Blue Rider
  Odessa Port
  Couple Riding
  Okhtyrka, Autumn
  Forest Edge
  Park of St. Cloud
  Moscow I
  Moscow; Smolensky Boulevard. Study
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  Josiana

  very interesting!!!