Kandinsky in Amsterdam
Exclusive and temporary at H'ART Museum, one of the grand masters of modern art: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). You know him from his abstract paintings full of organic and hybrid forms, but did you know that this pioneer started out as a figurative painter? Join him on his journey through art history and experience Kandinsky like never before. A personal story, told in more than 60 masterpieces, that takes you through various countries, historical events, and art movements. This exhibition is the first in collaboration with the Parisian art museum Centre Pompidou. On view until November 10, 2024. A must-see exhibition of 2024!
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was a Russian-French painter and printmaker. His painting style initially belonged to Expressionism, though it was sometimes also considered Symbolism. Kandinsky was one of the painters who gave form and a philosophical foundation to abstract art in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Background
Kandinsky was initially affiliated with Moscow University as a lawyer. In 1896, he moved to Munich, Germany. There, he studied first for two years at the Anton Azbe School and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. Kandinsky was one of the founders of the Phalanx art group and established the Phalanx Painting School a year later. One of the students, Gabriele Münter, became his life partner.
Blaue Reiter
In 1909, he founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung München with his friend Alexej von Jawlensky. However, he left the group after a year and, in 1911, founded the artists' association Der Blaue Reiter with Franz Marc, named after an earlier equestrian painting by Kandinsky and Franz Marc's fondness for horses; they both loved the color blue. Der Blaue Reiter also became the name of the almanac published by this group. In 1912, his important essay Über das Geistige in der Kunst appeared in two consecutive editions.
Abstract art
In Murnau, where Gabriele Münter lived, he is said to have discovered abstract painting in 1910, prompted by one of his inverted figurative works. “…I unexpectedly found myself before a painting of an indescribably overwhelming beauty. I stood there astonished, fascinated by this work… The painting had no subject, it represented not a single recognizable object, it was composed exclusively of luminous patches of color…” he declared. In Murnau, the influence of the Fauvists on his work was evident. In 1905, they had exhibited for the first time as a group at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, in which Kandinsky had also participated. An example of this influence is the painting *Murnau Kohlgruberstrasse* from 1908.
Opinions regarding the origins of abstract art diverge somewhat. Was it the Disques simultanés of the French Robert Delaunay, the musical canvases of the Czech Kupka, the geometric exercises of Kasimir Malevich, or the abstract process Mondrian ventured into, that took the revolutionary step towards abstraction? Or was it, after all, Mikhail Larionov with his Rayonism of 1907? And finally, let us not lose sight of the fact that Cézanne was already abstracting his Mont Sainte Victoire into pure color as early as 1885, and Monet his Nymphéas from 1890. It is certain that the then 20-year-old student Kandinsky had already noticed the dominance of color in old Russian icons in 1886, and that, nine years later, at an exhibition in Moscow, he stood in admiration of Claude Monet's painting The Wheat Shelf, wondering “…Why could the emancipation of color not go hand in hand with the liberation of form?…”. An Improvisation watercolor by him, in 1910, indeed ushered in abstract art. 
Kandinsky was inspired by music, and particularly by the atonal music of Arnold Schönberg. In *Über das Geistige in der Kunst* (On the Spiritual in Art), Kandinsky argued that color and sound have psychological effects on the human soul. He developed a theory of timbre that has had a major influence on the development of twentieth-century art. According to Kandinsky, every color speaks its own language with its own expression, and every color contains a form and a soul. Different colors together will create an inner experience in the viewer. Similarly, the various sounds in music, which together form a harmonious whole, will evoke an inner experience in the listener. He calls this powerful effect that color and sound have on the human psyche 'inner sound' or 'seelische Vibration'.
Bauhaus
At the outbreak of the First World War, Kandinsky returned to Moscow. He became a teacher there and married Nina de Andreevsky in 1917. His bride was 16, he was 50. His girlfriend, Gabriele Münter, had remained in Murnau. She would die there in 1962. She had kept one painting by Kandinsky, a portrait of her in a mauve dress when she was 27. It had been their favorite color.
After the war, he returned to Germany, and in 1922 he became a professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where Paul Klee was already affiliated. Here began the most productive period of Kandinsky's life. He himself called it “the time characterized by a lyrical geometry.” When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, he held the same position there. Also in 1922, he created a monumental set covering the four walls of the Salon for the Jurifreie Kunstausstellung in Berlin. This artwork was reconstructed in the National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM) in Paris in 1977.
In 1924, together with Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Alexej von Jawlensky, he founded yet another artists' group, Die Blauen Vier (The Blue Four). In addition to countless of his theoretical reflections that appeared in the Bauhaus-Bücher, he also produced work on his Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Point and Line to Surface), published in 1926. At the International Exhibition of Architecture in Berlin in 1931, he created the large ceramic wall panels for the Music Hall in the Mies van der Rohe House.
Last years
In 1928, Kandinsky obtained German nationality, but in 1933 he was forced to leave Germany, just like Paul Klee. The Bauhaus, which had relocated to Berlin the previous year, was closed by the Gestapo that same year. He came to Paris, where he assumed French nationality and went to live with Nina in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He painted his final piece, *Tempered élan*, there in 1944 and died on December 13, 1944. He died from the effects of atherosclerosis, a vascular disease. His widow, Nina, lived for nearly another 40 years. She was found murdered during a holiday in her chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, in September 1980.
Well worth the effort. Initially, I had my reservations, but they were quickly dispelled.