Kandinsky

he founder of abstract art
 

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of twentieth-century art. Nowadays he is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting.

Together with Franz Marc and others he founded the group of artists known as the "Blauer Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the "First Abstract Watercolour" of 1910.

In his theoretical writings Kandinsky repeatedly sought the proximity of music; and just as in music, where the individual notes constitute the medium whose effect stems from harmony and euphony, Kandinsky was aiming for a pure concord of colour through the interplay of various shades. Gauguin had demanded that everything "must be sacrificed to pure colors." Kandinsky was the first to realise this and thus to influence a whole range of artists.

Hajo Düchting (b. 1949 in Düsseldorf) studied art history, philosophy and archaeology in Munich, where he gained his doctorate in 1981 with a thesis on Robert Delaunay’s Windows series. After working in museum and adult education, he moved on to teaching posts and guest professorships at the universities of Munich, Kassel, Leipzig, Saarbrücken and Mainz. Düchting has published numerous articles on the art of the modern era, colour theory and the teaching of art and has authored a number of TASCHEN titles, including Paul Cézanne (1988), Wassily Kandinsky (1990); Robert and Sonia Delaunay (1993) and Georges Seurat (1999).