Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally known as the pioneer of abstract art and avant-garde art. He was one of the founders of pure abstraction in painting and an important member of Bauhaus.

Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to study drawing and painting. Also, as a trained musician, Kandinsky approached colour with a musician’s sensibility.

An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative concepts of colour on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract art movement in the early 20th century.

Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus. He conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology.

His examinations of the effects of forces on straight lines, leading to the contrasting tones of curved and angled lines, coincided with the research of Gestalt psychologists, whose work was also discussed at the Bauhaus.

Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, angle, straight lines and curves.