The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of twentieth-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 "Blauer Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the "First Abstract Watercolour" 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 colour through the interplay of various shades. Gauguin had demanded that everything "must be sacrificed to pure colours". Kandinsky was the first to realise this and thus to influence a whole range of artists.

Kandinskys Beginnings: "Mother Moscow" 1866-1896

Metamorphosis: Kandinsky in Munich 1896-1911

Breakthrough to the Abstract: "Der Blaue Reiter" 1911-1914

Russian Intermezzo 1914-1921

Point and Line to Plane: Kandinsky at the Bauhaus 1922-1933

Biomorphic Abstraction:Kandinsky in Paris 1934-1944

Picture Analysis: Red Spot II Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944:

A Chronology