Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944, Russia) was among the forbearers of modern art, as painter, teacher and art theoretician. Having immigrated to Germany in his thirties to study art among artists, musicians and writes who were calling to expand the conceptual and practical tools of artistic expression, Kandinsky was a founding member of the Blue Rider group. He soon became one of the most influential expressionist artist and theoretician of his generation. Kandinsky considered abstraction in art to be the pure essence of a complete expression of the human soul, thus rejecting the need to work from nature. Painting was conceived first and foremost as a spiritual means that allows viewers to connect to things not via the mind, but, as in the relation between music and hearing, through the sense of sight. For that end, Kandinsky developed a unique and rich language of symbols and abstract representations of ideas.
Related exhibition: Melting Walls
Wassily Kandinsky, Betonte Gewichte in Schwarz/Weiss, 1925, Pen, brush and india ink on paper