Abstract art has always been very poorly understood and so often ignored or ridiculed "Even my 5 years old kid can do that... pfff" who has never heard something alike? No, darling, your 5 years old definitively cannot.
But if there is a man who can bring the concept of abstract art to clarity and understanding this man is Wassily Kandinsky.
Born in Moscow in the year 1866 Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, Ukraine and stayed there until graduating from Grekov Odessa Art school and then returned to Moscow where he studied law and economics at Moscow University.
To the general amazement of us all he was actually passionate about his profession as an economist and lawyer to the extent that he was granted the vacancy of Roman Law professor at the University of Dorpat in Estonia.
When Kandinsky began his first studies in painting, drawing and drafts of anatomy he was already 30 years old! From then on it was the direction of the arts that his life took. He moved to Munich just to study art, first at a private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts.
But history happens ... With the beginning of World War I he had to return to Moscow in 1914, but the Communist movement present in the capital aroused deep rancor and nonconformity and he returned to Germany in 1920. In Germany he soon ended up finding the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture, went as a student and there he was taught and became professor from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933.
Kandinsky then gave up on this side of Europe and moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life, even becoming officially a French citizen.
Kandinky's art is special not only because it's the creation of a new concept, the pure abstract art; but because the genius of the painter was able to convey clearly what he meant: a color is the thing itself, doesn't need the form of something and if it does it must come from the inner need to express ideas, but the purity of color comes from the soul through the eyes and making its way back. Therefore the contemplation of a of Kandinsky's work is an exercise of meditation.
If color is an object of the soul and its power influences other souls the artist must have both accurate eyes when a solemn soul. Kandinsky advises us to stop thinking and open our eyes because the soul is a piano with several strings and these strings are called Colors as the chords are called painting.
It is obvious that Kandinsky noticed that his art wasn't understood or appreciated and for this he replied that the spectators have cold and indifferent eyes and their minds are not able to understand anything that is not explicit and predictable.
In his book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" he gives various advices to the new artists, he recommends that they must to be authentic to themselves and that they must to work exhaustively. Art has to have something to say and the goal has to be of inner meaning to the artist only, because, after all, the spectator isn't the target, they don't really care, only the artist understands himself and if the art is made for the others it was made for no one.
“A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art
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| Improvisation III
The work Improvisation III was painted in a small town called Murnau, Germany in 1909. But the landscape was drawn from his imagination. He made a series of "improvisations" based on German culture, folklore and fairy tales. As their gaze was not seeking to copy a real image the scenes acquire freedom and colors more and more intense and abrupt outlines.
For Kandinsky each color has a literally spiritual meaning. Just as for him nuances of red could go from the flame of thought to pain and blood; the blue was like a physical form of a sound, if it were a soft and tender nuance it was like the sound of the flute, already a darker blue like the cello.
But let us never forget here that Kandinsky was Russian and he did not abandon the iconography of the Russian Orthodox Church that in this work "Improvisation III" appears in the figure of the horse and the knight, St. George who dominated the dragon.
Kandinsky also uses the Fauvist technique of broad large strokes that allows colors to not blend. And contrary to what the Academy of Fine Arts teaches to all its students all over the world, Kandinsky invented his own way of making outlines. Instead of outlining the object first and then introducing colors, he outlined the color first and then traced the object over it.
In the "Improvisation III" we can see two figures dressed in green who are talking to each other. We do not know who these figures were to Kandinsky but they certainly represent aspects of the way he saw men.
There is one secret I will share with you within Kandinsky's works. Is that he created a meaning between left and right sides in his paintings. While the left side represents the material world the right side represents the spiritual side. In his own words, "The movement to the right gives the impression of a trip back home, while to the left - straight to the world." That said we can notice on the scene we can freely translate that the world bends its knees before the spirituality that extends its hands in a welcoming gesture, but they are placed in the left corner which can be telling us that spirituality is also there on the side of the material world.
And if you still don't appreciate abstract art, that is fine, but here it goes Kandinsky and a cat. You just cannot dislike kittens.
Where to see Kandinsky's works (about 216 of them):
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