Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky was inspired to become a painter after seeing Monet’s haystacks at an exhibition in his native Moscow. He was similarly influenced by Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, and the connection between music and colour became an intrinsic part of his work. He was a synthesist - allowing music to influence his painting and vice versa.

However, his work was not always universally accepted. He struggled to find a space for his abstract art amongst the rationalist climate of the USSR, and the same art was later branded by the Nazis as ‘degenerate’. He left Germany for Paris in 1933 and became a French citizen. It was in these years of exile that he produced some of his most famous works of art.

 Kandinsky is often viewed as the ‘father of abstraction’, and his colour theories are still studied today. Despite multiple periods of upheaval and exile in his life, he still managed to leave a lasting impression on the art of the 20th Century. He was a determined optimist with a spiritual outlook on life, and believed in the power of the soul. He said: “To create a work of art is to create the world.”