KANDINSKY
KANDINSKY LIFE
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CAREER
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LEGACY
Stephanie Schlim & Juillet Press Typography II 2011
Copyright Š 2011 Stephanie Schlim & Juillet Press. Printed and bound at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the creators. All rights reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 life 12 career 18 legacy 20 bibliography 21 colophon
ON WHITE II 1923, Oil on canvas Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
KANDINSKY • 7
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E F I L
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Griffin, Eve. “The Art Story.” 2010. http://www.theartstory.org/ artist-kandinsky-wassily.htm
“Wassily Kandinsky - Biography, Paintings, Books.” Wassily Kandinsky - Biography, Paintings, Books. http://www.wassily kandinsky.net/ (Accessed March 21, 2011).
While his parents encouraged his artistic and musical interests, they also pushed him to pursue law. Because of this influence, the intelligent, young Kandinsky entered the University of Moscow to study law and economics. His success in law was evident as he was soon offered a professorship in Roman law. In 1893, at the age of twenty five, he entered the Law Faculty of Moscow as a Docent and began his career as a professor. This was also the year that he married his cousin Anna Chimyakina. During his tenure at the Law Faculty of Moscow, Kandinsky was appointed professor to the department of Law at Derpt University in Tartu. This position was highly regarded, and he would have taken it, except it was at this point in his life that he turned to painting. After viewing a gallery of Impressionists, including work by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne, Kandinsky was significantly motivated by the new art movement. He also had influences from fauvism and pointillism, both of which were new and mysterious forms of art at the time. He took this opportunity to rewrite his life’s path and left his law successes behind him for a new career in fine arts. Kandinsky’s rash judgment and quick change of pace is based on his passion for the arts and his ability to express freely, as he once said, “There is no must in art, because art is free.” His first step in a new direction was to find a school worthy of teaching him how to express himself spiritually and through painting. This he found at Anton Azbe’s private and prestigious painting school. He attended this school for a few years, but soon grew tired and felt he needed more experience. He left in 1900 for the Munich Academy of the Arts, where he studied under Franz Stuck alongside other famous artists of the time such as Paul Klee, who would go on to teach at the Bauhaus alongside Kandinsky. While attending school in Munich, Kandinsky founded the avant-garde Phalanx School for the arts and became director. He used his previously attained teaching skills in law to become a regular professor at the art school.
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“Th e no re is m in a ust rt, b e AR cau TI s SF e LIFE • 4
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ON POINTS 1928, Oil on canvas Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris PREVIOUS: DOMINANT CURVE 1936, Oil on canvas The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
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CAREER • 15
Before returning to Russia, Kandinsky, while still teaching at the Phalanx School, wanted to delve deeper into the world of an artist. He began the successful organization “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider) in 1911. Along with artists such as Paul Klee, August Macke, and Frantsem Marc, Kandinsky began this group with the intention of coming together on the common grounds of modern art, spiritual expressionism, and the recognized relationships between music and art. They facilitated exhibitions and released an almanac, Der Blaue Reiter Almanac. Kandinsky also focused partly on his writing at this time, as he released his own book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, among other contributions to literature. When World War I began, The Blue Rider dissolved, along with Kandinsky’s relationship with Munter and his attachment to travel.
Griffin, Eve. “The Art Story.” 2010. http://www.theartstory.org/ artist-kandinsky-wassily.htm 3 Friedman, Barry . The Bauhaus: Masters and Students.. New York, NY: Barry Friedman Ltd., 1988. 4 Bayer, Herbert, Ise Gropius, and Walter Gropius. Bauhaus: 1919 - 1928. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1975. 1
His career was only slowed for a small amount of time by the war, because in 1912 Kandinsky was invited by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school, to join alongside the other talented artists and designers. He began his next teaching career at the prestigious architecture school, beginning with classes focusing on geometric elements and composition. Kandinsky’s paintings took an obvious shift from his previously gestural, romantic abstractions to a more mathematical, reasoned approach. This shift can also be understood in his second writing, On Point and Line to Plane, published in 1926. Unfortunately, the Weimar Bauhaus was closed due to Nazi control in 1933, so Kandinsky moved to France, where he lived the last eleven years of his life. During this period, his style of painting reversed as he experimented more with elements of his past paintings. His work was collected eventually, mainly by Solomon R. Guggenheim. Because of this collection, Kandinsky would later be known as the “patron saint of the Guggenheim.” His quiet death in December of 1944 at the age of 78 was a devastation to fellow artists and the art movements of his time.
LE GA CY
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PLATE IX 1922, Lithograph Museum of Modern Art, New York PREVIOUS: COMPOSITION IX 1936, Oil on canvas National Musuem of Modern Art, Paris, France
20 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bayer, Herbert, Ise Gropius, and Walter Gropius. Bauhaus: 1919 - 1928. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1975. Friedman, Barry . The Bauhaus: Masters and Students. New York, NY: Barry Friedman Ltd., 1988. Griffin, Eve. “The Art Story.” 2010. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kandinsky-wassily.htm Naylor, Gillian. “Claims for Art.” In The Bauhaus Reassessed: Sources and Design Theory. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1985. 83-102. “Wassily Kandinsky - Biography, Paintings, Books.” Wassily Kandinsky - Biography, Paintings, Books. http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/ (Accessed March 21, 2011).
COLOPHON • 21
COLOPHON Typefaces used in order of appearance: Knockout, Adobe Garamond Pro. Printing methods not yet determined. Thank you to Katherine Hughes’ Typography II Class for helping with the production of this book.