artnewzoo:The 148th Birthday of Wassily Kandinsky Kandinsky was...

artnewzoo:

The 148th Birthday of Wassily Kandinsky

• Kandinsky was born on December 16, 1866 in Moscow.

• In 1912, Kandinsky published Du Spirituel dans l’art, his own theory on painting and color, revealing a critical, spiritual subjectivity, perhaps more dedicated to pure, color-for-color’s sake than even Van Gogh.

• White = silence, Black = nothingness, Blue = celestial calm, Yellow = terrestrial violence, Green = immobile calm (the combination of contrasting blue and yellow), Red = lively movement

• Kandinsky imagined the spiritual life of humanity in the abstract as a pyramid, always trying to move up and ascend, with the select great artists of any one time at the top. To where would it ascend?

• The mysteries of Kandinsky’s art were also mysteries for Kandinsky: “Art is born form the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breadth.”

• His paintings are not impressions. They are improvisations and compositions, and they come from the soul. They deserve your attention.

• While not a strict member of the coming Avant-Garde, he was avant avant-garde. His belief in the effects of color translated to the belief that art could affect the human. Nothing has been the same since.

Happy Birthday you polychromatic painter, I salute your spiritual push to the pyramid!