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Wassily Kandinsky
(1866-1944)
TIMELINE:
Towards Abstraction
Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.'
Wassily Kandinsky, 1911
Kandinsky, Wassily, Russian in full VASILY VASILYEVICH KANDINSKY
(b. Dec. 4 [Dec. 16, New Style], 1866, Moscow, Russia d. Dec. 13,
1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Fr.), Russian-born artist, one of the first
creators of pure ab straction in modern painting. After successful
avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der
Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider; 1911-14)
and began completely abstract
painting. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and,
finally, to pictographic ( e.g., Tempered Élan, 1944).
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994]
Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician, once said
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the
piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching
one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.'
The concept that color and musical harmony are linked has a long history,
intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used color
in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre (the sound's
character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound.
He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music.
The Kandinsky pages were contributed by
Steven Brock.
See also: Mark
Harden's review of Kandinsky's Compositions
at Atlantis Art reviews.
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