Wassily Kandinsky

Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. Born in Moscow to a tea merchant's family, he studied law before moving to Munich at age 30 to pursue art. After encountering Monet's Haystacks at an 1896 Moscow exhibition, he realized color and form alone could carry emotional meaning. In 1911, he co-founded Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") with Franz Marc, a pioneering Expressionist movement emphasizing spiritual content and the symbolic associations of color.

Kandinsky believed in the spiritual power of art and the analogy between visual art and music. He called his spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and more elaborate works "compositions." His 1912 book Concerning the Spiritual in Art theorized his approach. From 1922 to 1933, he taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, where geometric abstraction dominated his style. When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, he immigrated to Paris and became a French citizen. His influence on Abstract Expressionism was profound, directly inspiring Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others. Major works hang at the Guggenheim, MoMA, and Centre Pompidou.