The Philharmonie de Paris is preparing to dedicate a major exhibition to one of modern art's most influential figures starting October 15th. Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), a Bauhaus professor and leader of the Blue Rider movement, possessed countless talents beyond his widely recognized but often incorrectly attributed role as the father of abstract art. Here are six artist secrets that reveal the complexity of this revolutionary painter.
The upcoming exhibition titled "Kandinsky: The Music of Colors" perfectly illustrates a remarkable faculty Kandinsky likely possessed: synesthesia, the mind's power to weave connections between different senses, particularly between sight and hearing. This gift was just one of many talents belonging to the Russian-born artist who lived in France and Germany, establishing himself across Europe as a pioneer of abstract art. He theorized his artistic philosophy in his famous essay "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1910), serving as both a revolutionary educator at the Bauhaus school and an engaged artist who became one of modernity's essential painters.
Kandinsky abandoned everything to live from his art at the relatively late age of 30 in 1896. He was teaching jurisprudence when a professor of law chair was promised to him at Moscow University, an academic consecration he renounced to become a painter instead. His decision was influenced by profound emotional experiences: discovering the folk arts of Vologda, encountering Claude Monet's Haystacks series, and attending a Wagner opera in Russia. The artist also felt shocked upon learning about the existence of electrons, discovered by Joseph John Thomson in 1897, which challenged the indivisibility of the atom. Kandinsky then broke with all positivist conceptions of nature and moved to Munich, where he enrolled in Franz von Stuck's studio.
Despite leaving his law career, Kandinsky never abandoned teaching entirely. Long before being named the first director of Moscow's Inkhuk in 1917 and later establishing himself as a visionary professor and "master of forms" at Weimar's Bauhaus in 1922, he founded his own art school within Munich's avant-garde Phalanx group in 1902. One of the master's teaching pillars was outdoor work, which justified long excursions with his student groups. Exceptionally for that era, the school accepted women students. Among them was Gabriele Münter, who became his companion and artistic partner. Recently rediscovered and celebrated in a recent exhibition at Paris's Museum of Modern Art, Münter sensitized Kandinsky to European folk arts, particularly glass painting.
Contrary to popular belief, Kandinsky didn't actually invent abstraction. From the Delaunays to Carlo Carrà, including František Kupka, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian, the race to invent abstraction around 1912-1913 was intense. Generally, Kandinsky is considered the winner due to his talisman watercolor "Untitled," which the artist dated to 1910, and his masterful essay "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." However, this paternity is contested: in reality, the watercolor in question, probably a sketch for Composition VII, should be dated to 1913, and "Concerning the Spiritual" was extensively revised between its writing in 1909-1910 and its publication in 1912. Since the rediscovery of major abstract compositions by Swedish spiritualist artist Hilma af Klint, created from 1906, Kandinsky's name generates less consensus. This represents a Western, even colonialist vision of art history, since artists from Japan, Mali, and Tibet worked with non-figurative forms long before the 20th century.
Kandinsky also authored several stage compositions, demonstrating his belief that "color is the keyboard, the eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano with many strings." Synesthesia wasn't just empty words for Kandinsky. Far from restricting himself to drawing musical inspiration for his painting, the author of "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," who was close to composer Arnold Schönberg, wanted to attack the total work of art in his own way. With this goal, he wrote several scenic compositions around 1910, while drafting his famous manifesto text, associating painting, music, and dance: "Yellow Sound," "Green Sound," "Black and White," and "Violet." Years later at Dessau's Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer drew inspiration from Kandinsky's chromatic theory to compose his famous Triadic Ballet.
After age 30, Kandinsky distanced himself from his native Russia, where his return motivated by hopes for the 1917 Revolution wouldn't survive his disillusionment three years later. A faithful Bauhaus professor from his 1922 arrival until the final move to Berlin ten years later, he then left Nazi Germany where his status as a "degenerate artist," moreover Slavic and leftist, threatened his life. When Josef Albers invited him to participate in refounding a Bauhaus in the United States two years later, Kandinsky always refused, by socialist conviction, to cross the Atlantic. After 1933, he remained in Paris with Nina Andreievskaya and was naturalized French in 1939. When friends like Mondrian and Marcel Duchamp left for New York, he stayed in France despite the Occupation and died there a few months after Paris's liberation.
Kandinsky definitely owed much to women throughout his life. Despite their strong animosity, Gabriele Münter piously preserved her ex-professor and companion's works to later donate them to Munich's Lenbachhaus. Devastated by losing her companion, with whom she had endured the 1920 loss of their only child, Nina Kandinsky dedicated the end of her life to him. She honored his memory by creating a Kandinsky Prize for painting in 1946. The impressive legacy of the expressionist's works and archives, which entered the Centre Pompidou's collections in 1981, certainly gives Kandinsky his particular aura in France. It's no coincidence that the Centre Pompidou's research library is called the Kandinsky Library, or "BK" for insiders.
The exhibition "Kandinsky: The Music of Colors" will run from October 15, 2025, to February 1, 2026, at the Cité de la musique - Philharmonie de Paris, located at 221, avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
