Dutch Exhibition of Kandinsky paintings
One of Holland’s best art museums, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag is putting on a beautiful exhibition of paintings by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, Tomas Mowlam reports.
Kandinsky produced some his best loved works as part of the der blaue Reiter (the blue rider) art group in Germany, before Europe disintegrated in the First World War.
Kandinsky, along with Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriel Munter, Lyonel Feininger and Albert Bloch came together to form the group in 1911.
They had no central manifesto just a simple desire to express the spiritual through abstracting form and shape, and vibrant colour.
They published just one almanac packed with writings, plays, and paintings, influenced by folk art and medieval European art. Their work is part of the midpoint between the impressionist style of artists like Van Gogh and the later complete abstraction; forms and shapes are blurred, but sometimes distinguishable.
The innocence and simplicity of this art was not to last however, as the outbreak of war tore apart the group.
Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Werefkin as Russian citizens had to move back to Russia. Others fared far worse; Macke was killed in Champagne in 1914 and Marc two years later at Verdun, both serving with the German army.
Kandinsky became one of the most influential of all abstract artists, and as arguably one of the most famous members of der blaue Reiter it’s his work from the period which forms the focus of the exhibition.
Born in Odessa in Russia in 1866, Kandinsky studied law and economics at the University of Moscow, before taking up art at the age of 30.
By 1896 he had settled in Munich, a buzzing artistic city in the pre-war years, and from 1911-1914 he was part of the group, producing paintings which seem to glow with colour as the shapes flow into each other.
He returned to Moscow in 1914, but left in 1921, unhappy with the new regime’s art theory. He then taught at the Bauhaus school in Munich, during the brief liberalism of the Weimar years, until the Nazis shut it in 1933 because it produced such “degenerate” art.
He moved to France and he died on 13th December 1944 at Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Kandinsky & der blaue Reiter runs from 6th February – 24th May, 2010, at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.
Image Credit: *clairity photo of Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 26, Rowing, 1912.
[...] #2 is a splatter of accidental colors and stencils. It reminds me of this Kandinsky painting, which is more improvisation than accident. It’s called Improvisation 26 Rowing [...]