Part of a new series of beautiful gift art books this book focuses on Wassily Kandinsky, a renowned Russian-born painter, wood-engraver and lithographer who is often regarded as one of the earliest pioneers of abstract art. Beginning with a fresh and thoughtful introduction to Kandinsky's life and art, Wassily Kandinsky Masterpieces of Art goes on to showcase his key works in all their glory; spanning his early paintings inspired by Russian folk art and fairy tales to his later works characterised by contrasting colours and striking geometric shapes.

Abstract Beginnings. A pivotal portfolio in the history of art

Throughout his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky transformed not only his own practice, but the course of art history itself. This essential guide traces Kandinsky’s rich repertoire to present the painter, engraver, teacher, and theorist credited with the first modern abstract painting and with one of the keenest theoretical minds of 20th-century art.

Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color and line and is today credited with creating the first purely abstract work.

As much a teacher and theorist as he was a practicing artist, Kandinsky’s interests in music, theater, poetry, philosophy, ethnology, myth, and the occult, were all essential components to his painting and engraving. He was involved with both the influential Blaue Reiter and Bauhaus groups and left a legacy not only of dazzling visual work, but also of highly influential treatises such as Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Key tenets included the connections between painting, music and mystical experience, and the purification of art away from material realism and towards an emotional expression, condensed in particular by color.

This book presents key Kandinsky works to introduce his repertoire of vivid colors, forms, and feelings. Tracing the artist’s radical stylistic development, it shows how one painter’s progression paved the way for generations of abstract expression to come.

The author

Hajo Düchting studied art history, philosophy, and archaeology in Munich, where he gained his doctorate in 1981 with a thesis on Robert Delaunay’s Windows series. After working in museum and adult education, he moved on to teaching posts and guest professorships at the universities of Munich, Kassel, Leipzig, Saarbrücken, and Mainz. Düchting has published numerous articles on the art of the modern era, color theory, and the teaching of art, and has authored a number of TASCHEN titles, including Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Georges Seurat.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

This generously illustrated volume displays Vasily Kandinsky’s brilliant use of color, shape, and composition through approximately 250 full-color illustrations. Essays by the world’s leading Kandinsky experts focus on the evolution of his work throughout all periods of his career: his exploration of his Russian roots and his emigration to Munich; his attraction to the Art Nouveau and fauvist movements; the formation of the Blue Rider group; the influence of music on his painting; his years at the Bauhaus; and his late work in Paris.

The book’s design allows for a thorough examination of Kandinsky’s most important works in all their extraordinary detail. Accessible, impeccably researched, and wide-ranging, this important volume offers an indispensable overview of the artist’s seminal works and a tribute to the beauty and power of Kandinsky’s vision.

About the Authors:

Helmut Friedel is an art historian and director of the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. He was director of the Lenbachhaus in Munich from 1990 to 2013 and has published numerous books on art, including Gerhard Richter: Red, Yellow, Blue, Franz Marc: The Retrospective and Kandinsky – Absolute. Abstract.
Annegret Hoberg is Head of Collections for the Blue Rider and the Kubin-Archiv at the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

Bringing the life and works of the great painter to life, Kandinsky explores the extraordinary output of one of Russia’s most well-known and influential artists. This book follows his artistic development, from the early folk art inspired by his native Russia, via his involvement with both Der Blaue Reiter (‘The Blue Rider’) group and the Bauhaus, where he taught for several years, to the later abstract paintings that are so recognizable today.

A complex and intriguing character, Kandinsky trained as a lawyer before abruptly turning to art at the age of 30. Although known internationally as the ‘Father of Abstraction’, this was a concept over which he anguished for years, before embracing it in his later work.

Both in his writings and in his paintings, Kandinsky’s influence has been enormous. He, in turn, was influenced by many different movements, from Art Nouveau to Symbolism and Surrealism. This book charts his artistic progress and is a stunning of an exceptional artist.

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.

Reproduces the poetical and evocative paintings of nature from the period 1880–1910, covering a wide range of artists from the Symbolists movement

This catalogue accompanied the first exhibition dedicated to landscapes by the Symbolists, the innovative movement whose artists took imaginative and emotional approaches to painting and embraced themes such as music, nationalism, science and modernity.

This book focuses on major artists of the avant-garde such as Gauguin, Van Gogh, Munch, Mondrian and Kandinsky, and also showcases other inventive artists from throughout Europe such as Hammershøi, Hodler, Khnopff and Gallen-Kallela, who are set alongside the visionary British artistry of Crane, Leighton, Watts and Millais.

The works illustrated provide a range of poetic and suggestive interpretations of nature from the period 1880–1910, with essays by acknowledged experts in the field providing a new chapter in the history of landscape painting.

Contents List:

Foreword • Introduction by Frances Fowle • Landscapes and Symbols by Rodolphe Rapetti • 1. Arcadia Contested by Richard Thomson • 2. Symbolism and Naturalism by Rodolphe Rapetti • 3. Dream Landscapes: From Fantasy Worlds to Nightmares by Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff • 4. Silent Cities by Frances Fowle • 5. The Cosmos and the Rhythms of Nature by Richard Thomson • 6. Beyond Landscape by Richard Thomson • Artist biographies

About the Authors:

Richard Thomson has held the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh since 1996. An expert on late 19th- and early 20th-century French art, Thomson has published widely in this important and lively field.
Rodolphe Rapetti is Chief Curator of Heritage at the Directorate of Museums of France in Paris.

Painting outside the box

The founder of abstract art

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of 20th-century art. Nowadays he is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting.

Together with Franz Marc and others he founded the group of artists known as the "Blaue Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the First Abstract Watercolor of 1910.

In his theoretical writings Kandinsky repeatedly sought the proximity of music; and just as in music, where the individual notes constitute the medium whose effect stems from harmony and euphony, Kandinsky was aiming for a pure concord of color through the interplay of various shades. Gauguin had demanded that everything "must be sacrificed to pure colors." Kandinsky was the first to realize this and thus to influence a whole range of artists.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art Series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Hajo Düchting (b. 1949 in Düsseldorf) studied art history, philosophy and archaeology in Munich, where he gained his doctorate in 1981 with a thesis on Robert Delaunay’s Windows series. After working in museum and adult education, he moved on to teaching posts and guest professorships at the universities of Munich, Kassel, Leipzig, Saarbrücken and Mainz. Düchting has published numerous articles on the art of the modern era, color theory and the teaching of art, and has authored a number of TASCHEN titles, including Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Georges Seurat.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Kandinsky - Кандинский

Стильно оформленное, богато иллюстрированное подарочное издание в футляре.

Это роскошное издание посвящено творчеству Василия Кандинского, основоположника абстрактного искусства. Ранее не публиковавшиеся фотографии сопровождаются статьями ведущих исследователей работ Кандинского, где прослеживается эволюция стиля художника. В богато иллюстрированной биографии мастера подробно рассматриваются его частная жизнь и творческий путь.

The inner properties of colour and form

The artist who pioneered new dimensions of expression in art

Wassily Kandinsky was undoubtedly one of the most exciting artists of the twentieth century. He brought an equal passion and commitment to his work as a painter, a theoretician and a teacher of art. After conventional beginnings in Munich, he devoted his intellectual and artistic energies to pioneering new dimensions of expression in art. He ultimately arrived at an abstract style of painting based on the inner properties of colour and form.

Although Kandinsky may not be the first truly abstract artist, he was nevertheless the first to experiment with non-representational forms in a logical manner and to develop out of them a homogeneous style. His writings on art, including his ground-breaking work On the Spiritual in Art, have lost none of their significance, and the Compositions which caused such a furore at the first Blaue Reiter exhibition in 1911 are still full and dazzling today.

The author:
Ulrike Becks-Malorny studied free painting in Geneva and art history in Bochum, Germany. Since gaining her doctorate in 1990, she has worked as an exhibition organizer and freelance author. She lives in Bonn, Germany.

Книга о живописце, графике и теоретике абстрактного искусства, одном из величайших художников XX столетия Василии Кандинском (1866–1944).

С именем Кандинского связано радикальное обновление живописи и развитие теории абстрактного искусства. Его живопись требует от зрителя анализа не только формальных качеств произведения, но и кроющегося за ними глубинного смысла.

В детстве он учился музыке (играл на виолончели и фортепиано) и рисованию. Изучал право и экономику в Московском Университете, в свободные часы занимался живописью. Закончив университет, остался на кафедре политической экономики, готовил диссертацию. Затем отказался от предложенной ему должности профессора Дерптского (ныне Тартуского) университета. Два события в его жизни заставили его оставить карьеру ученого и заняться живописью серьезно: выставка импрессионистов Москве и постановка оперы Вагнера «Лоэнгрин» в Большом театре. В его сознании звуки и аккорды музыки трансформировались в цвета. Кандинский принял решение отправиться в Мюнхен и посвятить себя живописи. Он является одним из создателей объединения «Синий всадник» и альманаха с таким же названием, в котором были напечатаны его статьи. В 1921 году окончательно покинул Советскую Россию, какое-то время был профессором Баухауза. Затем вместе с Явленским, Фейнингером и Клее основал группу «Четверо синих».

Издание состоит из семи глав, рассказывающих о жизни художника и об истории создания каждой картины, представленной в издании.

В конце книги приводится хронология жизни и творчества мастера, проиллюстрированная документальными фотографиями.