All right. Welcome back to the Deep Dive. This
is where we take, you know, a huge stack of sources.
We've got articles, historical research, some
really dense theory. And we boil it all down
for you. Exactly. And to one potent intellectual
cocktail for you, our very curious learner. Today
we're doing something a little different. We
aren't just discussing a famous painter. We're
really examining a philosophical system that
was rendered in oil and canvas. We are deep diving
into the life and, I mean, the truly radical
theories of Wassily Kandinsky, born in Moscow,
1866. And he's arguably the single most important
pioneer of abstraction in Western art. He is,
precisely because he didn't just stumble upon
it. This wasn't an accident. He built a systematic
bridge between the scientific, the sensory, and
the spiritual. to, well, to justify its existence.
That's systematic approach. That's our mission
today, isn't it? We need to unpack that structured
transition. So for the next, oh, 40 minutes or
so, we are going to explore how can Dinsney move
from a highly conventional analytical life into
the artistic avant -garde. All driven by this
one singular concept he called inner necessity.
Right. And we'll trace his journey from Imperial
Russia through the intellectual explosion of
the German avant -garde, his crucial structured
time at the Bauhaus, and then his final years
of synthesis in France. The core question we
really have to keep coming back to is this. How
did Kandinsky systematically construct a completely
new visual language, a language of abstraction
rooted in spiritual and musical resonance, not
just, you know, what he saw outside his window?
The difference between just removing objects
from a painting. Yeah, and fundamentally changing
the entire function of color and line. Okay,
so let's set the stage with a few essential facts.
Kandinsky was born in Moscow. His father was
a successful tea merchant, which means he grew
up in pretty comfortable, educated circumstances.
But here's the kicker that always gets people.
The delay. The delay. He was so focused on academia
that he didn't start studying formal painting
until he was 30. 30 years old. Before that, he
was on a completely different career path. And
he held Russian citizenship right up until 1939
when he finally became a French citizen. That
three decade delay and that prior professional
life, that's the key to understanding the...
the analytical rigor he brought to the chaos
of early abstraction. So let's begin with that
delayed start, this time when a future abstract
pioneer was still, you know, totally entrenched
in a traditional analytical world. Yeah, his
background wasn't in some bohemian art school.
He studied law and economics at Moscow University.
So he was on track for a very stable career.
Oh, absolutely. By all accounts, he was headed
toward a... highly promising teaching career
in those exact fields in this detail it's not
just trivia is it no no it's more than just filler
it's fundamental to his whole methodology His
early education gave him this profoundly structured
analytical mind. He spent years mastering systems,
rules, objective reasoning. And when he finally
switched to art, he just applied that same framework.
He applied that exact same rigorous framework
to color theory and form psychology. That's why
he wasn't some intuitive painter just splashing
paint around. He was an intellectual who constructed
a theoretical scaffolding first and then allowed
his creativity and emotion to inhabit it. He
didn't start formal painting studies, you know,
life drawing, sketching, anatomy, until 1896.
He enrolled in the Munich Academy and eventually
studied under Franz von Stuckte. Who was a symbolist
painter, which is important. Big emphasis on
drawing and line. It's just a monumental leap,
though. Giving up a secure kind of tenured track
career at age 30 to become a student again in
a field you have no formal training in. I mean,
what possesses someone to make that kind of radical
break? Exactly. But the shift wasn't entirely
out of the blue. Our sources note that even as
a child in Moscow, he remembered being, and this
is a quote, fascinated and stimulated by color,
seeing it as this separate living thing. And
that grew into his lifelong obsession with color
symbolism and psychology. It did. And that youthful
fascination, it had this powerful, almost spiritual
catalyst in 1889. He was 23, and he went on an
ethnographic research trip to the Vologda region,
way north of Moscow. He was there to study folklore.
But he ended up studying something else entirely.
Something far more profound to him than law,
yeah. He recalled this trip later, detailing
how the houses and churches there were decorated
with these shimmering bright colors, deep reds,
startling blues, vivid yellows, especially against
the dark wood of the interiors. Or the snowy
landscapes, I imagine. Right. And he said that
upon entering those decorated rooms, he felt
he was moving into a painting. Wow. That implies
a total, like... 360 degree immersion in color
and pattern, decades before artists were even
thinking about installation art. It's like the
color itself had its own vibrational reality.
And this experience, especially the log to folk
art's bold use of bright colors on a dark background,
you can see it in so much of his early work.
So it cemented this idea for him that color could
create an entire emotional and psychological
world. independent of realistic drawing or traditional
Western perspective. But if Alagda showed him
the power of color immersion, it was a moment
seven years later in 1896 that just fundamentally
fractured his understanding of what a painting
even was. This is a huge moment. Just before
he left Moscow for Munich, he visited an exhibit
of Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. Haystack
series. Specifically, yeah, Monet's Haystack
series, which explores the shifting light on
the same subject at different times. times a
day. And his reaction was, it was intensely conflicted.
It really shows the intellectual collision happening
inside him. He said he could not recognize it.
And that the non -recognition was painful to
me. That's his analytical mind demanding an object
or reference point. Exactly. He felt the object
of the painting was missing and that the painter
had no right to paint indistinctly. It was a
violation of the rules as he knew them. And yet.
Yet, here's the key transformation. He noticed,
to his own confusion, that the picture still
gripped me. It impressed itself ineradicably
on my memory. He realized the painting had this
fairytale power and splendor that existed almost
entirely separate from the physical object. The
identity of the haystack didn't matter. The pure
arrangement of color and light delivered the
essence. It showed him that if you remove the
object, the haystack, the painting didn't collapse.
It just transitioned from, say, descriptive journalism
to emotional poetry. And that experience, combined
with his analytical discipline, that laid the
groundwork for his defining motivation. Inner
necessity. A concept we really need to dig into.
It wasn't just, you know, I feel like painting.
Not at all. It was his term. for the singular
spiritual drive to create art that's rooted in
devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and
spiritual desire. It was the ultimate justification
for moving beyond external reality. It's a complete
rejection of the idea that art should just reflect
the surface of the world. In an affirmation that
it must excavate the soul. And this idea, this
inner necessity, is reinforced by another key
moment, what people often call the origin myth
of his abstract period. The upside -down painting.
The upside -down painting. He came back to his
studio one evening and saw one of his own paintings
hanging upside down. He just stared at the arrangement
of color and line for a while, mesmerized by
the composition, before he even recognized it
as his own work. It's the ultimate aha moment,
isn't it? It is. He realized the painting's power
came from the arrangement of color, line, and
mass, not from the subject or the correct orientation.
The composition held its own integrity, its own
expressive power, even when it was totally divorced
from a recognizable form. The non -object, for
the first time, had more power than the object.
And this wasn't just a visual revelation. Our
sources point out he was also profoundly influenced
by the music of Richard Wagner. Specifically,
the opera Lohengrin. Yes. He felt that Wagner
pushed the limits of music and melody beyond
standard lyricism. How does an opera feel like
a non -representational painting? I mean, was
it the sheer scale, the emotional intensity?
It was the scale and the overwhelming synesthetic
experience. Wagner wanted a gesamtkunstwerk,
a total work of art that synthesized everything.
Music, drama, visuals. And Kandinsky felt that
the music of Lohengrin transcended the actual
story. It became a purely emotional vibrating
force that hit you directly in the soul, bypassing
the intellect. And that's precisely what he wanted
his color compositions to do. Exactly. So if
you connect the dots, you've got the immersive
vlog, the color, the shock of Monet's pure light,
the upside down revelation and the musical push
of Wagner. You see him formulating this singular
idea, art. as a vibrational spiritual force.
Where the internal logic of the work, the inner
necessity, had to just completely supersede the
external requirements of representation. And
that foundation of music and vibration leads
us directly into how he systematically developed
abstraction into, well, a kind of sensory science.
It's one thing to feel it. It's another thing
entirely to write the manual for it. Okay, let's
unpack that. The shift from just inspiration
to actual instruction. Kandinsky didn't just
love music. He translated it directly into visual.
art using a very precise, almost scientific analogy.
His most famous quote establishes this perfectly.
He likens painting to musical composition. He
says, color is the keyboard, the eyes are the
harmony, the soul is the piano with many strings.
The artist is the hand which plays, touching
one key or another to cause vibrations in the
soul. That's not just a poetic flourish, is it?
That's his literal operating procedure. It is.
And Kandinsky had a deep musical background.
He learned to play the piano and cello starting
around 1871. And think about the difference between
those two instruments. Right. The piano is highly
structured, intellectual, tempered. It provides
the framework. The cello is deep, rich, vibrational,
emotional. It's the soul of the sound. And his
art reflects that duality, a rigid structure
housing this deep, raw emotion. Which is why
he used musical terms to classify his work. It
gave them instant intellectual weight. His spontaneous
emotional paintings were improvisations. And
the more deliberate, formally developed works
were compositions. And then there were the impressions,
which were based on external reality, but really
just as a starting point. But that distinction
between improvisation and composition is critical.
Improvisations were quick. Dynamic, unplanned,
compositions were monumental. Developed over
months or even years of preparatory sketches.
Like a symphony with multiple movements. This
structure ensured that even his most radical
abstractions were never, ever accidental. This
all sounds like more than just a creative preference.
It strongly suggests a potential synesthetic
experience, right? The involuntary linking of
senses, like seeing colors when you hear sounds.
And our sources confirm a direct connection here.
In 1909, Kandinsky attended the Theosophical
Congress in Budapest and saw a presentation by
Alexandra Unkovskaya. And what was she discussing?
She was discussing her innovative system of sound
-to -color synesthesia, or chromesthesia, specifically
applied to music education. And the Theosophical
context is important because she was looking
for a universal spiritual link between the senses.
And Kandinsky was captivated. Immediately. He
wrote that she had constructed a special, precise
method of translating the colors of nature into
music, of painting the sounds of nature, of seeing
sounds. So that presentation really solidified
his conceptual formula for the whole artistic
experience. That's right. The reciprocal relationship
between the artist and the viewer. A motion sensation,
the work of art sensation emotion. It's a feedback
loop, a vibrational circuit that uses the art
object as the medium. He based this on the principle
of the resonance of string instruments, which
is so specific. It is. The art isn't passive.
It's a vibrating entity that produces an emotional
frequency in the viewer, which then links the
viewer back to the artist's initial emotion.
And this allowed him to develop these really
specific universal color correspondences. Yellow
is the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet.
It suggests excitement and movement. Black is
the color of closure, the end of things, silence.
He believed combinations of colors would produce
vibrational frequencies, just like chords on
a piano. OK, so if yellow is a trumpet, what
about blue? And how did he defend these claims?
I mean, was there some kind of pseudoscientific
test or was it all just subjective? He presented
it as a universal system discovered through deep
spiritual intuition and observation. For him,
blue was associated with the cello. A deeper,
more spiritual contemplative sound. The color
of heaven in the inner life. And red. Red, associated
with the violin, was the sound of passion and
energy. And while it wasn't, you know, laboratory
science, the appeal of this system was that it
made abstraction defensible. It wasn't random.
It was structured. It was logical. And it was
aimed at the human soul. That level of systematic
thought really does point back to his background
in law. But where did this specific geometry
come from? He didn't just stop at color. No,
he developed this rigorous theory of geometric
figures and their relationship to the human spirit.
And that leads directly to theosophy. Directly.
Theosophy was hugely influential on him and on
other artists like Pete Mondrian and Kazimir
Melovich. It was a syncretic spiritual movement,
very popular in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, combining elements of Eastern and
Western mystical traditions. And Kandinsky was
deeply influenced by Madame Blavatsky, who...
Who postulated that creation itself is a geometrical
progression that starts with a single point.
So geometry isn't just decoration or design.
It's an echo of the original act of creation.
Precisely. Theosophical creative aspect is expressed
by a descending series of primal shakes, circles,
triangles, squares. And Kandinsky echoed this,
giving these shapes spiritual significance in
his two major books, Concerning the Spiritual
and Art in 1910, and then Point in Line to Plain
in 1926. I remember reading that he claimed the
circle is the most peaceful shape and represents
the human soul. That seems like a massive claim.
Why the circle? For him, the circle was the perfect,
self -contained, endlessly returning form. It
symbolizes the cycle of life, the infinite nature
of the soul. In a triangle. The triangle symbolized
aggressive movement and spiritual ascent, with
its sharp point reaching upward. The square,
being stable and flat, represented matter and
the material world. So by placing these shapes
in a composition, he wasn't just arranging design
elements. He was creating a spiritual map of
the cosmos. Exactly. This all sounds so intensely
intellectual, so planned. It makes you wonder
if pure emotion could ever break through that
highly structured framework. Which brings us
to a crucial, fascinating anecdote about the
creation of one of his great monumental works,
Composition 6. From 1913. Right. This is where
theory and reality collide. Perfectly. He had
been studying and preparing this massive work
for nearly six months. He intended it to evoke
these profound apocalyptic themes. Flood, baptism,
destruction, and rebirth all at once. So he had
countless preparatory sketches. Countless. But
when he outlined the final work on this huge
mural -sized wood panel, he just got completely
blocked. He was, as his partner Gabriel Minter
put it, trapped in his intellect. And her advice
was pretty radical for an artist so consumed
by theory. It was. She told him to simply repeat
the Russian word uberflute, which means deluge
or flood, like a mantra, to focus on its raw
sound rather than its intellectual meaning. And
the result was? Transformative. Repeating this
word, hearing the raw sound of the concept, it
allowed him to bypass the analytical block and
connect directly to the emotional and sonic resonance
of the subject. He completed the monumental work
in an intense, sustained three day span. That
moment just validates his entire system, doesn't
it? The structure and theory are necessary, but
the spiritual current unlocked by sound or pure
emotion has to be what drives the execution.
It resolves the tension between the lawyer and
the mystic. It proves that the inner necessity
must ultimately be the hand that plays the keyboard.
Absolutely. The intellectual framework is the
piano structure. The uber flute mantra was the
artist's hand finally hitting the keys and causing
the vibration. And that dramatic resolution leads
us out of pure theory and into his working practice,
the groups he formed to formalize and popularize
this visual revolution. So Kandinsky's journey
to pure abstraction wasn't just one single explosive
event. It was this carefully plotted metamorphosis
over the early 1900s. Yeah, initially when he
started painting seriously in Munich, his works
had broad swaths of color and, you know, recognizable
forms. But even then, you can see the deliberate
push toward his later theories. He was using
contemporary styles, but sort of... pushing them
past their limits. He was. You see strong elements
of phobism, a French movement where color expresses
intense emotional experience, not objective nature.
He also borrowed from pointillism, where color
is broken into dots or strokes. Which has the
effect of collapsing traditional depth of field
into a flat, really luminescent surface. Right.
So the objective function of color was already
starting to change radically in his work. This
period was also intensely personal for him. In
1902, he invited Gabrielle Minter to his summer
painting classes. They became partners, and she
bought a summer house in the small Bavarian town
of Murnau. The Rissenhaus. It became this crucial
intellectual hub for the German avant -garde.
They'd entertain colleagues there, fostering
a truly collaborative environment. And it was
during this time, in that transition period from
about 1903 to 1909, that these key transitional
works started to appear. where he's consciously
testing the boundaries of representation. Definitely.
You look at the Blue Rider painting from 1903,
which later gave its name to his group. It shows
a small, cloaked figure on a speeding horse.
And what's fascinating about that piece is the
intentional disjunction, as you put it. The horse's
gait is unnatural, almost childlike, which Kandinsky
had to know was anatomically wrong. Of course.
And the rider is less a specific person and more
just a series of colors, an indistinct blur.
So the focus isn't on an accurate depiction.
No, it's on the dynamic movement, the emotion.
emotional quality of the blue color, and the
disjunction itself, which forces you to move
beyond just recognizing what it is. The color
is the subject. The horse is just a vessel for
the action. Another key transitional piece is
the Blue Mountain from 1908 -1909. Here, the
landscape just dissolves into these flat plains
and broad applications of color. And the color
is presented almost independently of specific
form. You see three riders. Maybe a spiritual
echo of the earlier Blue Rider theme moving across
this bold, dark blue peak. The composition is
all large, simplified color masses flattening
the perspective and creating this intense visual
vibration. And these pieces really set the stage
for the formal theoretical group he founded.
But he didn't start the group right away. He
was first a co -founder and president of the
Newark Künstlervereinigung München, the Munich
New Artists Association, in 1909. But his art
was just moving too fast for them. The breaking
point came over a painting Kandinsky submitted,
Composition V. It was just deemed too radical
by the group's selection jury. They couldn't
integrate his purely non -objective approach
with their more conventional concepts. Which
led him and his close colleagues to split off
in late 1911. And this friction gave birth to
something far more influential. He formed a new
group, the Blue Rider, or Der Blau Rider, with
kindred spirits like Franz Marc, August Mach,
and of course Gabriel Minter. The name itself,
combining the spiritual blue and the dynamic
writer, signals their whole aim. This was a theoretical
engine, a publishing house. They released the
Blue Writer Almanac, which wasn't just about
German art. It featured Russian icons, medieval
woodcuts, folk art, trying to show a spiritual
continuity across all forms of genuine, intuitive
expression. They held two really seminal exhibits,
establishing their presence. But then, unfortunately,
the outbreak of World War I in 1914... cut their
plan short and Kandinsky was forced to return
to Russia. But the legacy of this short -lived
group was cemented by more than just paintings.
It was cemented by a book, Kandinsky's treatise
concerning the spiritual and art released in
1910. This was the blueprint. It was a spirited
defense and promotion of abstract art for the
Western world. It affirmed that all forms of
art could reach a level of spirituality and argued
that color could and must be used autonomously,
separated from just describing an object. This
was revolutionary because it gave nonrepresentational
art a kind of ethical and spiritual justification.
It did. And in this book, he formalized those
three categories we mentioned earlier. Impressions
were visual descriptions, just a starting point.
Improvisations were spontaneous, deeply felt
emotional reactions coming directly from the
unconscious. Like a burst of feeling. Exactly.
And then there were the compositions. These were
the ultimate works, carefully developed from
the unconscious mind over months of meticulous
planning. They were meant to be vast and monumental.
Like a fully scored symphony. The difference
between an improvisation and a composition is
the difference between a heartfelt, spontaneous
piano solo and writing an entire concerto. The
treatise also introduced his metaphor of the
great spiritual pyramid. Right. He argued that
society was this large triangle. And the artist?
who receives the spiritual message first, stands
alone at the narrow upward moving tip. So what's
understood only by that lone artist today becomes
common knowledge, the base of the pyramid tomorrow.
This metaphor defines the role of the avant -garde,
the artist as a prophet, dragging the rest of
the spiritual world upward. And the international
impact of this theory was immediate and potent.
By 1912, it was being reviewed in London. And
the English translation published in 1914 just
rapidly expanded his reputation. You had extracts
appearing in influential magazines like Blast
and The New Age. These ideas were essential because
they gave intellectual legitimacy to a form of
painting that was often just dismissed as chaotic,
random, or merely decorative. He had created
the structure to house the chaos. So by 1914,
Kandinsky was established as a prophet of this
new art, armed with a global reputation and a
complete theoretical framework. But the personal
and political turmoil that came next forced him
to change his focus entirely, moving from the
philosophical to the pedagogical. The outbreak
of World War I in 1914 forces Kandinsky to just
abruptly return to Moscow, closing this exhilarating
chapter of Der Blaue Reiter. And this seven -year
Russian interlude, it was defined by intense
personal upheaval and radical political shifts.
Yeah, his personal life certainly didn't settle
down. His complicated relationship with Gabriel
Munter formally ended in 1916. Then in 1917,
he married Nina Nikolaevna Andreevskaya. And
he was 50. She was a student in her late teens.
Yes. They had one son, false rewarded, who tragically
died in 1920. So this chaotic personal backdrop
is happening at the same time as the seismic
shift of the Russian Revolution. And the revolution
at first actually gave him a massive, if brief,
opportunity. It did. He became an insider in
the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky,
the People's Commissar of Enlightenment. Kandinsky
really dedicated himself to reforming art education
and administration, helping establish major institutions
like the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However,
the revolutionary artistic mood turned against
him pretty quickly. Very quickly. While he was
focused on spiritual abstraction, the emerging
powerful movements like constructivism and suprematism,
they demanded utilitarian collective art. They
saw his spiritual outlook as too individualistic
and bourgeois. This ideological friction is so
crucial. The radical artists wanted art that
served the state, built factories, created propaganda.
And Kandinsky wanted art that uplifted the soul.
They were completely incompatible goals. So as
a result, he painted very little during this
period. He was sidelined from creating. Instead,
he channeled his analytical discipline into teaching.
He focused on developing this incredibly structured
artistic pedagogy. a teaching program based entirely
on the measurable effects of form and color analysis.
He was building educational systems, not paintings.
And it was this highly structured teaching expertise
that made him such a valuable target for the
German avant -garde again. Exactly. In 1921,
he was invited back to Weimar by Walter Gropius,
the founder of the Bauhaus, the most important
modern design school in the world. That move
from the, you know, the spiritual chaos of post
-revolutionary Moscow to the highly structured,
almost industrial environment of the Bauhaus
in 1922 must have been monumental. It was. And
his art became significantly more geometrical,
more pedagogical. It was marrying his theoretical
spiritual claims to demonstrable principles of
perception. But we should spend some time on
his teaching methodology here. How did his analytical
mind structure art education at the Bauhaus?
Well, he was immediately put in charge of the
foundational courses. He taught the basic design
class for beginners, the advanced theory course,
and painting classes. And he would force students
to perform exercises that, in his mind, proved
his theories. Like the famous color and shape
quiz. Exactly. He'd ask students, which shape
goes with which color? Is yellow a circle, a
square, or a triangle? Is blue a circle, a square,
or a triangle? And he found a consistent pattern
across students, didn't he? He did, which reinforced
his belief in these universal correspondences.
Yellow was associated with the triangle's sharp,
aggressive dynamic. Blue was associated with
the circle -deep, calm, spiritual. And red was
associated with the square, solid, earthly. So
he wasn't just stating a preference. He was trying
to prove these relationships through collective
observation. Right. And that detailed work on
forms, specifically points and line forms, led
to his second major theoretical book, Point and
Line to Plane, published in 1926. This book explored
the psychological effects of forces on straight
lines contrasting curved and angled lines. And
detailing how a single point expands into a line
and a line expands into a plane. And what's truly
fascinating is that his studies coincided with
cutting edge research from Gestalt psychologists,
whose work was also being actively discussed
at the Bauhaus. And Gestalt psychology argued
that the mind organizes visual chaos into meaningful
structured holes. So Kandinsky was grounding
his abstraction. not just in ancient theosophy
anymore, but in contemporary perceptual science.
The circle, the half circle, the angles, straight
lines, curves, these geometrical elements took
on increasing importance, now backed by psychological
observation and pedagogical testing. Yes, the
geometry isn't arbitrary. No, it's the visual
equivalent of the piano structure we discussed.
He stated clearly that the geometrical point
is the ultimate union of silence and speech,
symbolizing the soul before the act of creation.
And we see this intense geometrical production
peak in key works from the period, like Yellow
Red Blue from 1925. It's a massive painting,
two meters wide. And visually, it's highly structured.
You have a vertical yellow rectangle on the left,
an inclined red cross near the center, and a
large dark blue circle dominating the right.
It's a world of intersecting lines, arcs, colored
checkerboards. This work perfectly illustrates
his distance from his radical contemporaries,
doesn't it? It does. It shows his departure from
the sheer functionalism of constructivism, which
wanted only straight lines and utilitarian forms.
And it departs from the stark reductionism of
suprematism, like Malevich's Black Square, which
aimed for spiritual silence through zero form.
Kandinsky's geometry is never sterile. It uses
color gradations, delicate complexity, a multitude
of intersecting forms. It invites the viewer
to observe not just the individual shapes, but
the dynamic relationship, the position, the harmony
of the forms. It necessitates deeper observation.
It requires intellectual engagement, not just
spiritual surrender. And while he was teaching
at the Bauhaus, he also became a key member of
Die Blaue Wehr, the Blue Four. Yes, alongside
Paul Klee, Lionel Feininger, and Alexei Vongelinsky.
This was a strategic group specifically promoted
in the U .S. from 1924 by the dealer Gulka Share.
They were consciously exporting the German avant
-garde, framing it for an American audience.
Unfortunately, this fertile Bauhaus chapter came
to a violent close because of the rising political
hostility of the far right. The Nazis viewed
all modern, non -representational art as decadent
and corrosive to German culture. The pressure
was immense. The school was forced to relocate
multiple times, from Weimar to Dessau, then to
Berlin, before being dissolved entirely by the
Nazis in July 1933. And this direct political
hostility against his life's work forced Kandinsky,
once again, to leave Germany for exile. He settled
in Paris beginning his final synthesizing period.
It's a testament to the power of his ideas that
they were deemed such a threat by totalitarian
regimes. And that move to France marks the beginning
of the great synthesis, the final culmination
of everything he had learned, from the peasant
art of Moscow, the spiritual fervor of Munich,
and the geometrical rigor of the Bauhaus. The
Paris years, from 1934 until his death in 1944,
are just a masterful demonstration of synthesis.
He was working in modest conditions, out of an
apartment studio. But producing canvases of immense
complexity, bringing together four decades of
evolution. Shapes with supple, non -geometric
outlines. They often suggest microscopic organisms,
cellular structures, embryos. But he was still
using them, fundamentally, to express his inner
life and the process of creation. So he was borrowing
from the emerging visual language of science,
the images you'd see through a powerful microscope,
but infusing them with spiritual meaning. Absolutely.
They look like amoebas or floating entities.
But for Kandinsky, they represented the primal,
self -generating life force of the universe.
He also started incorporating new techniques
and palettes that explicitly referenced his past.
Our sources say he used color compositions that
evoked Slavic popular art. drawing on his Russian
roots, but filtering them through his abstract
lens. And structurally, he added texture, occasionally
mixing sand with his paint to give the canvas
a granular, almost rustic quality. It's a full
circle synthesis, then, combining the organic,
gritty texture of a log to folk art with the
geometrical rigor of the Bauhaus and the spiritual
language of biomorphism. It was his way of stating
that the primitive and the sophisticated, the
inner and the outer, were fundamentally one.
And this final period culminates in his final
two major compositions, Composition IX from 1936.
That one features these highly contrasted, powerful
diagonals, often set against a pink or pastel
background, with a central soft form that gives
you the impression of an embryo in the womb,
a clear, deliberate reference to rebirth and
creation. And then there's the truly monumental
Composition X from 1939. In this piece, you have
small squares, dots, colored bands, all standing
out against a black background. They suggest
star fragments, nebulae, filaments floating in
cosmic darkness. There are also these enigmatic
hieroglyphs covering a large maroon mass that
seems to float in the upper left corner. And
these forms are subtly harmonized, deliberately
intended by Kandinsky to resonate with the observer's
soul, revealing themselves progressively, layer
by layer. The visual complexity demands patience.
It requires the viewer to engage in the same
dialogue between structure and emotion that defined
his own creation process. To really grasp the
weight of these final works, we have to go back
to Kandinsky's own self -conception, the artist
as prophet at the tip of that upward -moving
pyramid. He genuinely believed that the authentic
artist, creating from internal necessity, was
responsible for dragging the rest of humanity
into the future. And this prophetic vision was
often linked to apocalyptic themes, which was
a preoccupation throughout his life. A fascinating
one. He was constantly meditating on Christian
eschatology, the coming new age. He drew on biblical
stories, Noah's Ark, Jonah and the Whale, the
four horsemen of the apocalypse. But critically,
he never tried to just picture these stories
as simple religious narratives. Never. He used
their veiled imagery as powerful symbols of the
archetypes of destruction, creation, and death
-rebirth, the ultimate spiritual cycles he felt
were imminent in the pre -war world and throughout
the rise of totalitarianism. His goal wasn't
to illustrate a Bible scene. It was to evoke
a spiritual resonance. A communion of viewer,
painting, and artist in the face of epical change.
Unfortunately, this prophetic art was viewed
as not just degenerate, but dangerous by the
political forces of his time. And that leads
us directly to the historical tragedy of the
Antarctic Kunstkampagne, degenerate art. Yes.
In the years leading up to the war, many of Pandinsky's
works were confiscated by the Nazis. The overall
inventory of works confiscated during this campaign,
over 16 ,000 pieces in total, including his own
now lost Swirely Rod from 1916, it was extensive.
The consequence was catastrophic for modern art.
Confiscated works were either sold abroad to
raise foreign currency, exchanged for more traditional
German art. or tragically destroyed. And Kandinsky
died in exile in France in 1944, just as the
war was drawing to a close, never returning to
Germany. Yet the destruction of his works didn't
diminish his commercial or artistic significance
at all. No. Kandinsky remains one of the most
commercially valuable artists of the modern era,
which is a testament to the enduring power of
his synthesis. We see this reflected in the market.
His 1909 painting, Study for Improvisation 8,
sold for a massive $23 million in 2012. And more
recently, in 2016, his 1935 abstract work, Rigide
Courbet, set a new record for him. fetching $23
.3 million. And that painting, incidentally,
was originally bought directly from him by Solomon
R. Guggenheim in 1936, which shows its immediate
recognition by major collectors. However, the
shadow of Nazi confiscation means his legacy
is still tied up in these incredibly complex
ethical and legal issues, specifically around
looted art. Which continue to dominate headlines
today. And this tension between immense market
value and ethical sourcing remains an active
and vital area of discussion. The core principle
at stake is simple, right? A sale that occurred
under duress when a collector was forced to sell
to escape persecution is fundamentally invalid.
That's why we've seen significant cases continue
to unfold decades later. I mean, consider the
complex case involving painting with houses,
which was originally owned by the Jewish collector
Emanuel Albert Lowenstein. This painting was
held by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for
decades, and the sale took place in 1940, six
months after the German occupation began. The
case was highly controversial because the Amsterdam
City Council initially tried to keep the painting.
They argued that the museum's interest in preserving
cultural heritage outweighed the family's historical
claim, despite the acknowledged duress of the
sale. But historical justice prevailed. It did.
In August 2021, the Amsterdam City Council made
the decision to return the painting to the Leuenstein
family, acknowledging the gravity of the injustice.
Which shows that the principles Kandinsky sought,
spiritual truth and ethical necessity, are still
playing out in legal battles over his own physical
artifacts. The complexity of tracing ownership
through all that political turmoil. ensures that
Kandinsky's works will continue to generate discussion
far beyond just aesthetics. And that enduring,
complex dialogue is perhaps the truest testament
to his inner necessity. So what is the ultimate
takeaway from this deep dive? I think Kandinsky's
unique achievement was pioneering abstraction
not through accident or whim, but through a rigorous,
structured, theoretical framework. He treated
color and form as vibrational elements intended
to reach the human soul. He charted this incredible
path, moving from the shimmering colors of a
log of folk art and the color independence he
found in Impressionism, toward a systematic synthesis
combining musical analogy, perceptual science,
geometric, and eventually biomorphic forms. All
of it aimed at making an unseen spiritual reality
visible. And he used his training in law and
economics to give that reality a rational defense.
He truly believed in the artist as a conduit,
that singular figure at the apex of the pyramid.
He didn't just react to reality. He believed
his work was actually ushering in tomorrow's
reality. His life challenges you, the listener,
to employ critical thinking in a world that is
just saturated with visual information, to move
past simply seeing what is painted and instead
sense why it matters and what unseen spiritual
reality the artist is trying to illuminate. It's
a challenge to think synesthetically. And if
you are struggling to grasp that union of sound
and sight, just remember that Kandinsky once
helped produce a stage design animated by sound
from Mussorgsky's pictures at an exhibition.
He was literally translating musical composition
into light and movement. So if color is the keyboard
and the eyes are the harmony, what musical chord
would your own inner necessity play right now?
That's your Deep Dive homework. Thank you for
tuning in to this journey through the spiritual
geometry of abstraction. We'll see you next time.