Wassily Kandinsky

After studying law in Moscow Kandinsky decided to study art. He left Russia at the age of thirty and went to Munich where he enrolled at Anton Ažbè’s school and, from 1900, was a pupil of Franz Stuck’s at the academy. Kandinsky himself said that the lessons were a disappointment as he was attracted to a different painting style to that of his teachers. This resulted in the formation of the Phalanx association of artists in 1901. In 1908 Kandinsky was involved in the creation of another group of Expressionist artists, the Neue Künstlervereinigung Munich (NKVM). From this time onwards abstract elements played an ever increasing role in Kandinsky’s work. When, however, arguments arose with the more conservative artists at the NKVM in 1911, Kandinsky and Franz Marc left the association to found the Blauer Reiter group of artists. Kandinsky tirelessly continued to develop abstract art until the outbreak of World War I. He strove to create links to the principles of music and, in his practical work, explored the theories of harmony, composition and colour that he taught.

Kandinsky and Flechtheim knew each other well. In 1927 – by which time Kandinsky was already teaching at the Bauhaus – the art collector and publisher Christian Zervos arranged a meeting between Kandinsky and Flechtheim for the sale of a painting. A major retrospective was held in 1931 in Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin accompanied by an exhibition catalogue and illustrations of the exhibition in Flechtheim’s art magazine ‘Omnibus’. When the National Socialists came into power Kandinsky was driven into exile. When his painting was confiscated by the Nazis to be shown at the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition, Kandinsky – who was living in France – made the following comment that underlines the artist’s ambivalent relationship to the city on the Isar that he had all his life: “Poor dear Munich! […] the number of visitors is huge – more than 1 million have seen it and Munich only has a population of 1 million.”