Art should open your eyes, Kandinsky said, to a spiritual world of pure thinking hidden behind the facade of reality.
You don’t have to share his esoteric creed, which was influenced by theosophy and anthroposophy, to enjoy the splendid show of his work at Paris’s Centre Pompidou.
The exhibition has been organized by the three largest holders of Kandinsky’s work -- Munich’s Lenbachhaus, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Pompidou. It started last fall in Munich and will travel to New York in September.
In addition to about 100 paintings, there are a number of drawings and theoretical writings on display. The chronological hanging makes it easy to follow the career of this peripatetic artist who, at different stages of his life, held three different nationalities.
Although Kandinsky’s fame rests on his abstract paintings - - some even call him the father of abstract art -- he was already 45 years old when he produced his first canvas that didn’t reflect reality.
Born into a well-to-do family in Moscow, Wasilly Kandinsky (1866-1944) studied law and economics and had a couple of years as assistant professor under his belt when he decided, in 1896, that was not his idea of a future. Instead, he went to Munich to study painting. Thanks to his father’s generous support, money was no object.
Avant-Garde Riders
Over the years, Kandinsky became a pillar of the Munich art scene. In 1911, he was, along with his mistress Gabriele Muenter and Franz Marc, the driving force behind Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of avant-garde artists.
Kandinsky’s early paintings, mostly landscapes, reflect the influence of Russian folk art and Expressionism, the dominant force in Germany from around 1905.
The idea of giving up representational art altogether came to him in 1908 when he saw one of his paintings standing on its side on the easel: “On opening the studio door, I was suddenly confronted with a picture of indescribable and incandescent beauty,” he said. “One thing became clear to me -- that objects needed no place in my paintings.”
From then on, Kandinsky’s canvases became more and more abstract. “Bild mit Kreis” (Image With a Circle), dating from 1911, was his first painting without any trace of an identifiable object. It’s in the show, on loan from the National Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi.
After the outbreak of World War I, Kandinsky had to leave Germany as an enemy alien. He went back to Russia, only to find himself marginalized after the Bolshevik revolution.
Bauhaus Workshop
Although he did his best to swim with the tide, designing cups and saucers for the proletariat, Kandinsky jumped at the first chance of returning to Germany: The Bauhaus offered him a teaching post. From 1922 to 1933, he led -- first in Weimar, then in Dessau and Berlin -- the mural-painting workshop.
In those years, his style became more and more geometrical. To spice up the circles and triangles he added snake-like squiggles, hardly in line with Bauhaus orthodoxy.
In 1933, Kandinsky, although a citizen by then, left Germany for a second time: Hitler had no more use for abstract painters than Stalin. The notorious 1937 show of “Degenerate Art” featured 14 of Kandinsky’s works.
He moved to France and survived the German occupation in a small town in the Pyrenees, not far from where Braque and Derain were living. He died shortly after the Liberation.
The style of his late work is more organic than geometrical: Instead of circles and triangles you find amoeba- like forms, not unlike Miro’s charming little creatures.
All the periods of Kandinsky’s career are illustrated in the Paris show by top-drawer paintings, beautifully hung with enough space between them so that each canvas can breathe and work its magic.
“Kandinsky” is at the Pompidou Center, Paris, through Aug. 10. From Sept. 18 until Jan. 10, 2010, the show will be at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. For details, see http://www.centrepompidou.fr or call +33-1-4478-1233.
Courtesy Bloomberg.
