Wassily Kandinsky Facts & Worksheets

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and graphic artist known for being one of the pioneers of modern art, particularly abstract art during the early 20th century. He was famous for his works like Composition VI, On White II, and Contrasting Sounds.

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Key Facts & Information

Wassily Kandinsky

• He started studying painting through figure drawings, sketching, and anatomy.
• His excellence in his career path allowed him to be offered the position of chair of Roman Law at the University of Dorpat.
• He was instrumental in establishing the Museum of the Culture of Painting.
• Painting was a profoundly spiritual experience for him. He saw abstract forms and colors resulting from substantial spirituality and intense human emotion as having the potential to transcend cultural and physical boundaries.
• He made it his mission to influence others through abstract art so that they could express their inner needs.
• He had synaesthesia, a condition that caused him to hear colors.

Early Life

• On December 16, 1866, he was born. Their extended family settled in Moscow and was mostly made up of business people.
• His father owned a tea factory in Odessa, so the family moved there in 1871. He went to a city grammar school. Aside from the drawing lessons, he also took music lessons, where he learned to play the piano and cello. His childhood paintings used specific color schemes.
• His parents saw his future as a lawyer and forced him to enroll in the Law Faculty of Moscow University in 1886. He completed his studies with honors and later married his cousin Anna Chimyakina.
• He began his teaching career as an Associate Professor of Law Faculty in 1893.
• In 1895, he attended an exhibition of the French impressionists in Moscow. At the Bolshoi Theatre, he saw the painting “Haystacks” and the opera “Lohengrin,” and the arts shocked him emotionally.
• After three years of teaching, the renowned University of Dorpat in Tartu appointed him as a Professor in their Department of Law. Shortly after this offer, he gave up teaching in pursuit of painting.

Studying Arts

• In 1896, he moved to Munich and enrolled in a prestigious private painting school directed by Yugoslavian artist Anton Azbe. In art school, he learned painting fundamentals, explicitly dealing with line and form.
• One year after failing his previous art school, he enrolled in the Munich Academy of Arts in 1900. He studied under the direction of Franz Stuck, a German graphic artist. Stuck was impressed with him, even though his palette was criticized for being too bright. Stuck was even more impressed when he tried to work in black and white.
• He divorced his wife, Anna, in 1903. He was frequently accompanied by a young artist named Gabriela Munter, with whom he spent the next five years traveling across Europe, visiting and participating in exhibitions.
• He began creating landscapes based on color contrasts when they returned to Bavaria. He created figures out of color spots and lines that seemed to outperform real-life images.
• He also began creating captivating images and artwork based on mysterious legends.

Painting Career

• In 1900, he took part in exhibitions organized by the Moscow Partnership of Artists.
• In 1901, he established the art collective Phalanx, as well as a school in Munich where he taught.
• By 1905, he had already organized twelve exhibitions of Phalanx painters’ work.
• In 1909, he co-founded and served as president of The New Group of Artists, Munich.
• He participated in exhibitions hosted by the Jack of Diamonds in 1910 and 1912.
• In 1911, he and his friend Franstem Mark founded the Blue Rider, a name they wanted to use for their exhibitions and publication activities.
• His paintings depicted colored masses overlapping freely to create powerful works of art. He occasionally used musical terms to identify his works, arguing that music is abstract.
• In 1912, his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published. It served as the founding theory of abstractionism. He emphasized self-expression and the self-development of spirit in creating art.

In Russia

• He and Gabriela moved to Switzerland on August 3, 1914, after being forced to flee Germany due to World War I. He began working on a book about points and lines. Gabriela returned to Munich in November while he traveled to Moscow.
• He married Nina Andreevskaya, the daughter of a Russian general, in 1917.
• During the World War, his works exhibited a hint of abstraction. He simplified the image by separating elements with shapes.

Chairman of Museum Bureau

• For three years, beginning in 1918, he assisted the ISO of Narkompros in facilitating art training and museum reform.
• He was appointed Chairman of the Museum Bureau’s State Purchasing Commission. He also helped to establish twenty-two provincial museums.
• He created a special curriculum about color and formed analysis as a professor. The Board of Institutes, however, disagreed, denying irrationality in the creative process. His opponents were concerned with material analysis to create a constructive arrangement and setting.
• The Constructivists contended that using abstract methods does not imply that the creator is an abstract artist.
• He left Moscow in December 1921 because of his colleagues’ unrelenting attacks.

In Bauhaus

• He and Nina moved to Weimar, where he ran a fresco workshop. He began teaching again and eventually developed ideas.
• His book Point and Line to Plane was published in 1926. He wrote it while deeply analyzing the separation of picture elements and experimenting with color.
• His works changed as a result of his ideas in the book. His works began to incorporate distinct geometrical elements and a cold color palette.
• He painted “Yellow-Red-Blue” in 1925, expressing cold romanticism.
• In his final years at Bauhaus, his paintings displayed ease and strange humor.
• After the national socialists closed Bauhaus in 1932, he moved to France with his wife.

In Paris

• He worked alone in Paris because the city’s environment did not correspond with his abstract painting concept.
• His isolation caused another change in his paintings. He used primary color combinations to create soft and refined colors. It expanded the form repertoire and created a floating illusion of the picture. His works abandoned cold romanticism in favor of a picture of a fairytale.
• Due to a lack of materials, his works faded in the field, so he resorted to gouache painting on small format cardboard. 

Death and Legacy

• On December 13, 1944, he died of cerebrovascular disease, which causes strokes.
• He always believed in abstraction and form language, and his art was influenced by music and spirituality.
• He became so well-known in the field of arts and painting that his 1913 Painting with White Lines was auctioned for up to $41 million at Sotheby’s in London in 2017.

Most Notable Works

The Blue Rider

• It featured a solitary rider racing across a landscape. It was said to symbolize his decision to change his painting style.
• It was made up of contrasts of light and dark on the hillside, similar to Impressionist Claude Monet‘s work. The color palette used to depict horseback was said to foreshadow abstraction.
• The deepness of Blue, according to him, represents the strength of a man’s calling toward the infinite, where he must be awakened with a desire for the pure and supernatural.

Moscow I (Red Square)

• It was a picture of Moscow from a letter he had written to Munter. He might have made references to the outside world in his paintings, but he remained committed to the synesthesia of color, sound, and spiritual expression in art.

Several Circles

• It was inspired by his desire to create an ideal form of art that expresses a spiritual self.
• He made it as part of an experiment with a painting in a linear style that he expressed with circles. According to him, the circle represents a mix of various rivalries.

List of Works

In Munich

• Odessa Port (1898)
• The Blue Rider (1903)
• Couple Riding (1906)
• Colorful Life (1907)
• Autumn Landscape with Boats (1908)
• Houses in Munich (1908)
• Murnau Street with Women (1908)
• Winter Landscape (1909)
• Untitled, First Abstract Watercolor (1910)
• Composition IV (1911)
• Impression III, Concert (1911)

During the Blue Rider Period

• The Last Judgment (1912)
• Color Study Squares with Concentric Circles (1913)
• Composition IV, V, VI and VII (1913)
• Improvisation. Deluge and Dreamy (1913)
• Painting with White Lines (1913)
• Fugue (1914)
• Improvisation (1914)

In Russia

• Moscow. Red Square (1916)
• To the Unknown Voice (1916)
• In Grey (1919)
• Violet Wedge (1919)
• Composition #224, On White (1920)
• Blue Segment (1921)
• Red Spot II (1921)

In Bauhaus

• Black and Violet (1923)
• Circles in a Circle (1923)
• Composition VIII (1923)
• On White II (1923)
• Transverse Line (1923)
• In Blue (1925)
• Yellow-Red-Blue (1925)
• Several Circles (1926)
• Soft Hard (1927)
• Upward (1929)

In Paris

• Composition IX (1936)
• Dominant Curve (1936)
• Thirty (1937)
• Composition X (1939)
• Sky Blue (1940)
• Four Figures on Three Squares (1943)
• Composition (1944)
• Last Watercolour (1944)
• Ribbon with Squares (1944)
• Tempered Elan (1944)

Wassily Kandinsky Facts Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Wassily Kandinsky Facts across 25 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Wassily Kandinsky worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Wassily Kandinsky, who was a Russian painter and graphic artist known for being one of the pioneers of modern art, particularly abstract art during the early 20th century. 

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

• Wassily Kandinsky Facts
• Father of Abstract Art
• Colored Lines
• Kandinsky Art History
• Abstract Expressionism
• Famous Abstract Artists
• Word Search
• A or B?
• What’s Missing?
• Puzzle Pieces
• Painting Emotions

Frequently Asked Questions

What Kandinsky is famous for?

Wassily Kandinsky was a painter and art theorist from Russia. He was regarded as one of the forefathers of Western abstract arts.

How much is a Kandinsky worth?

He became so well-known in the field of arts and painting that his 1913 Painting with White Lines was auctioned for up to $41 million at Sotheby’s in London in 2017.

What did blue mean to Kandinsky?

The deepness of Blue, according to him, represents the strength of a man’s calling toward the infinite, where he must be awakened with a desire for the pure and supernatural.

Could Wassily Kandinsky hear color?

He had synaesthesia, a condition that caused him to hear colors.

Who is the father of abstract art?

He was regarded as one of the forefathers of Western abstract arts.

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