Vassily Kandinsky: A True German

Vassily Kandinsky: A True German Expressionist

Russian-born abstract expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) whose "explorations of the possibilities of abstraction make him one of the most important innovators in modern art the father of abstract expressionism" is considered a leading figure of the German Expressionist movement of the early 20th century

That seems ironic at first: Kandinsky was (1) born in Moscow to Russian parents; (2) spent his first 30 years in Russia; (3) attended university in Moscow; (4) took up law in Moscow as his first profession, and (5) arrived in Munich, as a beginning art student, at age 30

, a late age for a beginning painter, especially one who achieves such fame. Still, Kandinsky is considered one of the most important of the German Expressionists of the early 20th century. He was heavily influenced by metaphysical and abstract ideals of German Expressionism (more than by, for instance, the orderly ideals of French Fauvism). German Expressionism's abstract, spiritual, and metaphysical ideals are clearly reflected within Kandinsky's abstract and extremely colorful art. Based, then on Kandinksy's having learned to paint under German masters; his having made Germany his home (until fleeing the Nazis); his having taught at the Bauhaus, and founded (with Jean Marc) the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) movement, Vassily Kandinsky deserves, in my view, though Russian by birth and nationality, to be considered a true German Expressionist.

Kandinsky's childhood in Russia was not without its German influence. His maternal grandmother was Bavarian, and he learned to speak and read the German language as a child.

He once wrote, in a letter to a friend, 'I grew up half-German: my first language, my first books, were German'.

Kandinsky lived and painted in Munich at a time when German society, and in fact the world, was greatly changing, during the run-up to World War I. Even before that war, German Expressionist painters had endeavored, based on their new theories of painting, which sought to capture within art, elements of real life, as well as abstractness and spirituality, to now paint not so much within a vacuum of pure art, but rather, to instead artistically express (by allowing their essences to flow, from within the artist, onto a canvas) influences derived from nature; music; architecture; sculpture, and from spirituality and philosophy, within their art as well. As Kandinsky's fellow German Expressionist Karl Jakob Hirsch stated: 'This is the beginning! In our hearts we were ready to throw everything away -- the old fashioned ideas, the junk!'

Vassily Kandinsky's (and his fellow German Expressionist painter, philosopher and Blaue Reiter co-founder, Franz Marc's) Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) movement (1911-14), and their Blaue Reiter Almanac (1911) and Blaue Reiter Exhibition (1912) (all so-named due to Kandinsky's abiding fondness for a pair of canvases he had painted years earlier and lost, of blue horses and riders, symbolic representations of St. George slaying the dragon

), embodied many of the revolutionary artistic ideals and theories of the German Expressionist movement itself, including: (1) theoretically and artistically 'slaying the dragon', so-to-speak, of creativity-inhibiting conventions of art, and instead seeking within art spiritual meaning, rejuvenation, and newness; and (2) endeavoring to express artistic meaning through abstraction, rather than through more traditional representations of concrete figures

. As Robert Hughes (1980) suggests, Kandinksy's view of painting was that its main purpose was "to prepare people to think and see in terms of immaterial form, rather than perceived objects like apples and nudes"

. And, as Kandinsky himself stated, in The Blue Rider Almanac, in 1912:

The creative spirit is often concealed within matter. The veiling of the spirit in the material is often so dense that there are generally few people who can see through to the spirit. There are whole epochs which disavow the spirit . . .

[and] this is, on the whole, still so today. People are blinded. A black hand is laid over their eyes.

Like many other creative individuals of his day, including, not only fellow artists of his such as Mondrian, but also writers like: T.S. Eliot; Marsden Hartley, and Wallace Stevens, and composers like Scriabin

, Kandinsky was a believer in Theosophy. Theosophy itself is essentially "a body of belief which holds that all religions are attempts by man to ascertain "the Divine," and as such each religion has a portion of the truth."

Kandinsky's insistent search for, and quest to express essences of pure meaning, spirituality, and oneness with the universe, through abstract and colorful representations of such meanings, underscores Theosophist philosophy. Such a quest for new ways of expressing universal meanings from within abstract, interpretative, and otherwise new juxtapositions of lines, images, colors, and (recognizable and/or unrecognizable) objects, was also an aim the German Expressionist movement as a whole.

Kandinsky, while still living and painting in Germany, was also one of the first teachers at the German Bauhaus, a state-run school founded on the principle of combining the teaching of architecture, arts, and crafts. As Le Tagat states, of Kandinsky's time at the Bauhaus: "In this school Kandinsky found a place that might have been made to measure for him, since the teaching was based on the theoretical and practical application of the synthesis of the plastic arts."

Also, in keeping with Kandinsky's theosophical views, his commitment to teaching at the Bauhaus, and particularly to teaching about the inherent interrelated-ness of art, craft, and architecture, not only theoretically but within the universe itself, was likely not difficult.

In addition, Vassily Kandinsky had a unique theory of color, one that informed, influenced, and drove his work. In keeping with his theosophical beliefs about spiritual connections of seemingly disparate things within the universe (such as, for example, the five senses (sight; sound; smell; taste, and touch), Kandinsky considered it possible to "see" sounds, and "hear" colors, that "sounds and colors correspond to each other."

This was perhaps partly because Kandinsky had a musical background, and had learned to play the piano and cello as a child.

When he later took up painting in Munich, the unique theory of color as related to sounds and emotional states, that he carefully devised over his years of painting, may have sprung in part from that early musical background. Further, according to Robles:

Kandinsky believed that the artists had an 'inner necessity' to express the "inner essence of things." The main focus of his exploration of colour was how it could be employed as an expression of the spiritual, he imagined it to act as a kind of intermediary between the viewer and the spiritual world.

He felt that each colour had an inherent character defined by its relation-

ship to its opposing color . . .

According to Kandinsky, different colors also carried emotional meanings, and made people who saw those colors feel various emotions, based on the emotional meanings those colors contained. For example, according to Kandinsky (as quoted in Robles) yellow is, in and of itself: 'warm; cheeky and exciting; disturbing for people; typical earthly color' but 'compared with the mood of a person it could have the effect of representing madness in color . . . An attack of rage, blind madness, maniacal rage ... "