Wassily Kandinsky

In the late 20s and early 30s, nationalist socialists started to disapprove the Bauhaus, and it closed in 1932. My wife and I moved to France, where I continued to paint, however I was not invited to work at art schools or with new people as before. I had left many of my coligues back in Germany and had few friends or fans in Paris. However even in this time my painting style continued to develop. I moved from using hard geometric shapes to a more fluid style filled with more subtle colors and shapes. There is less rigid form in these paintings, and the different aspects of the painting seem to almost drift across the surface. The two examples shown display this new style very clearly. The first one is titled "Sky Blue" and it is an oil on canvas and was painted in 1940. The second Example is Titled "Colorful Ensamble" and is oil and gloss on canvas. It was painted in 1938. 

This painting, titled Yellow Red Blue, was painted in 1925 and was an oil on canvas. In this time I was also working in Germany. At this point geometric shapes continued to be incredibly important to my work. I was also experimenting with "cold romanticism", using shapes and colors to try and portray the new world of romance, which I believed to be much more intense and potentially painful. My artwork gradually was becoming more aimed toward the emotional and physical experience of the viewer, trying to induce feelings in them by using specific colors and geometric shapes.  

This painting, titled Composition VIII,  was painted in 1923. At this point I had returned to Germany and was invited almost immediately to teach at the influential Bauhaus (the Higher school of construction and art designing). There I continued to teach and develop my style and techniques. This painting is considered my most important work from this time. It fully encompasses the visual aspects important to me at the time, which consisted of many geometric shapes displayed without one central focus. At this point geometric shapes were more important to me than color, however I continued to use color very thoughtfully to convey the spiritual of the painting to the viewer. More specifically the circle was particularly important to me at the time. I believed that it was the most elementary shape and that it had a deeper meaning to human beings than just being a shape. 

This Oil painting, titled Study for Circles on Black, was made in 1921. In this time I was also in russia, but I was having some issues with other artists and the board at the institute where I was teaching. My main opponents on the board, Rodchenko, Stepanova and Popova, viewed my art and style as too controversial and pressured me to leave russia. The backward russian world was not quite ready for my artwork. In addition the new socialist government put great pressure on the art world. It eventually drove the movement of socialist realism, which was the opposite of what I was doing. My painting were removed from soviet museums and I returned back to Germany. -Wassily K.

In this painting, composed in 1919, you can see me start to experiment with abstract works, this painting is oil on canvas. This painting shows how I traveled from painting more traditional paintings early in my career to painting completely abstract Work.  In this point in my career I was living again in Russia, after leaving Germany once World War I started. Back in russia I was very influential, helping start twenty two provincial museums. However I remember most fondly working as a professor helping run free workshops. I made my own curriculum in these workshops based on the analysis of color and form that helped people learn about my concept of spiritual art. I believed that Abstract art was the best because focusing all energy on trying to recreate a subject took all the soul out of art. "art should express the spiritual, and had slowly come to realize that, for him, representation of objects was ‘disturbing’ to this aim" -The Oxford Companion to Western Art. He wished that through his use of color and lines he could make art for the eyes like music for the ears. This painting is a direct example of that. -Wassily K. 

This painting, titled Odessa Port is an example of some of my early work done before I moved to more abstract style art. This painting was made in 1898 and it is oil on canvas. My paintings from this period are his most traditional. This was painted eight years before I composed my first "truly" abstract work, although my work became gradually more abstract as I developed as an artist. The inspiration was Odessa Port, a city in southern Ukraine  where I studied as a child. This particular painting falls into the impressionist movement, where the subject is still clear, but the brush strokes are less precise and capturing the light of the scene is more important. It is interesting to compare this to some of my later works as there is a huge difference. - Wassily K.