Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinskywas an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorshipat the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studiesat the age of 30...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth16 December 1866
CityMoscow, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
I value those artists who embody the expression of their life.
Barriers are continually being made out of... new values which have overturned the barriers of the past. Thus one sees that it is not basically the new value that is of prime importance, but rather the spirit that is revealed in this value, as well as the freedom necessary for this revelation...
Drawing instruction is a training towards perception, exact observation and exact presentation not of the outward appearances of an object, but of its constructive elements, its lawful forces-tensions, which can be discovered in given objects and of the logical structures of same-education toward clear observation and clear rendering of the contexts, whereby surface phenomena are an introductory step towards the three-dimensional.
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key.
Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.
In the hierarchy of colors, green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable, narrow...
With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.
The eyes are hammers.
An empty canvas is a living wonder — far lovelier than certain pictures.
The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.
Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.
The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.