Kandinsky was, arguably, the first painter to successfully achieve true abstraction. Here he is working directly with the canvas and each colour and line is governed by its relationship with those around it. The softer organic shapes are balanced by slashing lines, the soft tones are counter-pointed by bold fiery colours, the dark in harmony with the light. The composition has movement and flow and in many ways has been created by the artist by a similar approach to a composer creating a piece of music.
Kandinsky hoped to achieve the same direct expressiveness of great music in his paintings and dealt with similar elements of rhythm, tempo, tone, volume… This series of early ‘Compositions’ are generally cited as the first abstract paintings.
Like his friend and colleague, Franz Marc, Kandinsky believed that art should strive to be a synthesis of both the intellectual faculty and the emotions. He thought that art can express the “inner grace” of the artist and reveal that quality in the viewer. His work, along with others of Der Blaue Reiter, would be a notable influence on all abstract art to follow including Synchromism, Orphism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Activism, De Stijl as well as the Dadaists and Surrealists (particularly Juan Miro). Kandinsky survived the First World War and was hugely influential between the wars. He was an influential teacher at the Bauhaus and an important conduit of ideas between Russia and the West.
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Good scan of this early abstract painting can be found at the WebMuseum Kandinsky pages
www.wassilykandinsky.net/ has extensive content...
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