Experience the Magic of Kandinsky Animation Art An Enchanting Visual Journey

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky is considered to be one of the very first Western proponents of abstract painting, known for his colorful fields of spidery lines and shapes.

(1911), where he laid out his tenets for artistic creation as a spiritual act. Later, during his 11-year teaching stint at the Bauhaus, he expanded upon these ideas in

But Kandinsky did not intend for his theories to be prescriptive. Artmaking, he insisted, was about freedom. Nevertheless, there are several lessons that artists should heed if they are to meet Kandinsky’s requirements. We start with five below.

Wassily Kandinsky Teaching Resources

According to Kandinsky, an object could only legitimately be considered art if it was an unadulterated, outward manifestation of the artist’s psyche—of his or her authentic thoughts and feelings. Despite the theoretical underpinnings of his work, Kandinsky believed that theory came

He felt that the expression of one’s inner reality was crucial to achieve moral integrity. Anything less would not only undermine one’s artistic merit, but it would also be spiritually harmful to the artist. Furthermore, true artists should be prepared to be misunderstood throughout their lifetimes.

Monet’s now-iconic haystacks were an early influence on Kandinsky, who was struck by his own inability to identify the real-world objects that the forms referenced. At first taken aback by this disconnect, Kandinsky soon embraced its possibilities, eventually insisting upon art that was not only abstracted but entirely non-representational.

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Kandinsky experimented with compositions populated by lines, simple geometric shapes, and the energized points where they met or overlapped. Unlike artists working in a Suprematist or Constructivist style, he was not interested in exploring or achieving a purity of composition for its own sake and considered the commitment to any specific formal qualities unimportant. Rather, even in their simplest iterations, his forms embody references to the artist’s interior world.

While Impressionist painting introduced Kandinsky to unorthodox ways of using color, the Fauvist paintings he saw while living in Paris from 1906 to 1907—with their wild hues that were entirely divorced from the real world—proved to be even more influential. Embracing this type of freedom in color, Kandinsky pushed his thinking a step further.

(1810), which German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had published a century earlier, Kandinsky believed that each color had an inherent personality. For example, green was like a cow: peaceful yet strong. Yellow, while warm and earthy, also represented rage and could be deeply unsettling. Blue, on the other hand, was both serene and heavenly, and could be experienced as a kind of transcendent spirituality.

Music And Abstract Painting: The Case Of Kandinsky And Wagner

Kandinsky compared colors to the keys of a piano and the human soul to the piano itself. As an artist used colors, he or she was in effect playing different musical notes, causing “vibrations in the soul.”

The connection between painting and music was more than just a metaphorical analogy for Kandinsky. He most likely had synesthesia, a condition in which two or more of a person’s senses are intertwined. One indication of this was the striking experience he once had during a performance of Wagner’s

Kandinsky noted that, even without synesthesia, colors had implicit aural qualities: No one would associate yellow with low notes nor deep blue with high notes. Colors affected the viewer, therefore, with respect not only to their visual associations but also to the sounds they produced (whether or not they were consciously heard), and a painting would do well to be composed like a musical score.

I Create Everything Anew

(1926), Kandinsky expands on elements such as rhythm and amplification. An artist should experiment with repetition, ordering, and scale, not just with colors but also with points, lines, and planes. These, he believed, were the building blocks of a composition.

Kandinsky’s philosophy about spiritual life and art is founded on the idea of a three-tiered triangle containing all of humanity, with the sections descending from top down, smallest to largest. The triangle is slowly—nearly imperceptibly—moving forward and upward, towards a higher level of enlightenment. The top of the triangle represents the current day, while the next segments represent future ages.

The most spiritually elevated people exist in the top section and are, as such, the smallest group; they see today what others will not understand until tomorrow. Artists exist in every segment of the triangle, and those who can see beyond the bounds of their section are prophets, offering “spiritual food” that will only be fully grasped by the segment below in the day to come.

How Music Motivated Artists From Matisse To Kandinsky To Reinvent Painting

The artist’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, when translated into art, have the power to affect the spiritual climate of his or her society. The artist is obligated to use his or her talent to make a positive impact in this way—to create sincere, original work that helps humanity toward collective enlightenment.

Jenna Gribbon, Luncheon on the grass, a recurring dream, 2020. Jenna Gribbon, April studio, parting glance, 2021. Jenna Gribbon, Silver Tongue, 2019

Kandinsky compared colors to the keys of a piano and the human soul to the piano itself. As an artist used colors, he or she was in effect playing different musical notes, causing “vibrations in the soul.”

The connection between painting and music was more than just a metaphorical analogy for Kandinsky. He most likely had synesthesia, a condition in which two or more of a person’s senses are intertwined. One indication of this was the striking experience he once had during a performance of Wagner’s

Kandinsky noted that, even without synesthesia, colors had implicit aural qualities: No one would associate yellow with low notes nor deep blue with high notes. Colors affected the viewer, therefore, with respect not only to their visual associations but also to the sounds they produced (whether or not they were consciously heard), and a painting would do well to be composed like a musical score.

I Create Everything Anew

(1926), Kandinsky expands on elements such as rhythm and amplification. An artist should experiment with repetition, ordering, and scale, not just with colors but also with points, lines, and planes. These, he believed, were the building blocks of a composition.

Kandinsky’s philosophy about spiritual life and art is founded on the idea of a three-tiered triangle containing all of humanity, with the sections descending from top down, smallest to largest. The triangle is slowly—nearly imperceptibly—moving forward and upward, towards a higher level of enlightenment. The top of the triangle represents the current day, while the next segments represent future ages.

The most spiritually elevated people exist in the top section and are, as such, the smallest group; they see today what others will not understand until tomorrow. Artists exist in every segment of the triangle, and those who can see beyond the bounds of their section are prophets, offering “spiritual food” that will only be fully grasped by the segment below in the day to come.

How Music Motivated Artists From Matisse To Kandinsky To Reinvent Painting

The artist’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, when translated into art, have the power to affect the spiritual climate of his or her society. The artist is obligated to use his or her talent to make a positive impact in this way—to create sincere, original work that helps humanity toward collective enlightenment.

Jenna Gribbon, Luncheon on the grass, a recurring dream, 2020. Jenna Gribbon, April studio, parting glance, 2021. Jenna Gribbon, Silver Tongue, 2019