Vasily Kandinsky

Vasily Kandinsky became the pioneer of abstract art; he was a co-founder of the Blauer Reiter, an art theorist and an influential teacher at the Bauhaus. When he abandoned his promising career as a lawyer in favour of art at the age of 30, no one could have guessed that a few years later he would play a decisive role in determining and revolutionising twentieth-century art.

What the art critic Will Grohmann wrote in 1924 about Kandinsky in the historic series Junge Kunst, reflects current opinion at the time about the path Kandinsky had chosen towards abstraction, which was regarded as both irritating and bold. However, it was not just his radical views about art that polarised people; the charismatic painter also provoked them with his personality, prompting admiration and repudiation in equal measure. This volume is designed to appeal to book-lovers and is lavishly illustrated. It illuminates the principal milestones in Kandinsky’s artistic and private life, providing an insight into his legacy and focusing in particular on his years at the Bauhaus, where he taught together with artist colleagues like Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger.