Kandinsky, Wassily, Russian Vasili Vasilyevich Kandinsky 1866-1944
French painter

Born in Moscow, Russia, he was the originator of Abstract painting. After studying law in Moscow, he went to Munich to study art, and at the age of 30, he began painting. A watercolour he produced in 1910 is considered to be the first 'abstract' work of art, but all representational elements were not banished from his work until the 1920s. In Paris he absorbed the influence of the Nabis and the Fauves, but Russian icon painting and folk-art were equal influences on him. In this he was at one with his Russian contemporaries. In 1912 he published his famous book �ber das Geistige in der Kunst (Eng trans On the Spiritual in Art, 1947) and in the same year was a co-founder with Franz Marc and Paul Klee of the Blaue Reiter Group, editing with Marc the Blaue Reiter almanac. He returned to Russia to teach in 1914, and after the Russian Revolution became head of the Museum of Modern Art (1919) and founded the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (1921). In 1922 he left Russia and was eventually put in charge of the Weimar Bauhaus School. From 1920 his paintings are predominantly geometric, in line with the Suprematist and Constructivist work he had left behind in Moscow, which was eventually to fall out of favour there. In 1933 he moved to France (he became a naturalized citizen in 1939), and came under the influence of Jo�n Mir�. As a painter and as a theoretician he has exerted considerable influence.

Bibliography: Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work (1959)