Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia and was the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant.^[5][6] One of his great-grandmothers was Princess Gantimurova, a Mongolian princess.^[7] Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew.

In 1889 at age 25, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region's folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), were reflected in much of his early work.

A few years later he first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul".^[8]

Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968).

Discover more about Early life related topics

Gantimurov family

Gantimurov family

The House of Gantimurov is a Russian princely family of evenks.

Ethnography

Ethnography

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

Vologda

Vologda

Vologda is a city and the administrative center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the river Vologda within the watershed of the Northern Dvina. Population: 313,944 (2021 Census); 301,755 (2010 Census); 293,046 (2002 Census); 282,802 (1989 Census).

Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into twentieth-century continental philosophy. As a statesman in the French government, he was instrumental in the formation of the European Union.

Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity;^[9] it was a central aspect of his art. Some art historians suggest that Kandinsky's passion for Abstract art began when one day, coming back home, he found one of his own paintings hanging upside down in his studio, and he stared at it for a while before realizing it was his own work,^[10] suggesting to him the potential power of abstraction.

In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck.^[11] He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the impressionistic style of Haystacks; this, to him, had a powerful sense of colour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write about this experience:

That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognise it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.^[12]

— Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner's Lohengrin which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standard lyricism.^[13] He was also spiritually influenced by Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theory postulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles, and squares. Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910) and Point and Line to Plane (1926) echoed this theosophical tenet. Illustrations by John Varley in Thought-Forms (1901) influenced him visually.^[14]

Metamorphosis

Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula (1908)

In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited Gabriele Münter to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted, and their relationship became more personal than professional. Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. The number of his existing paintings increased at the beginning of the 20th century; much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths of colour and recognisable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky's paintings did not feature any human figures; an exception is Sunday, Old Russia (1904), in which Kandinsky recreates a highly colourful (and fanciful) view of peasants and nobles in front of the walls of a town. Couple on Horseback (1907) depicts a man on horseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russian town with luminous walls across a blue river. The horse is muted while the leaves in the trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots of colour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism in the way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface. Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to express Kandinsky's experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.

The Blue Rider (1903)

Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider's cloak is medium blue, which casts a darker-blue shadow. In the foreground are more amorphous blue shadows, the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The blue rider in the painting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Some art historians believe that a second figure (perhaps a child) is being held by the rider, although this may be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction, allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became an increasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; it culminated in the abstract works of the 1911–1914 period. In The Blue Rider, Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colours than in specific detail. This painting is not exceptional in that regard when compared with contemporary painters, but it shows the direction Kandinsky would take only a few years later.

From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow), until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. In 1908 he bought a copy of Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1909 he joined the Theosophical Society. The Blue Mountain (1908–1909) was painted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain of blue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, with three riders and several others, crosses at the bottom. The faces, clothing, and saddles of the riders are each a single color, and neither they nor the walking figures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also are indicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of color in The Blue Mountain illustrates Kandinsky's inclination toward an art in which colour is presented independently of form, and in which each color is given equal attention. The composition is more planar; the painting is divided into four sections: the sky, the red tree, the yellow tree, and the blue mountain with the three riders.

• 

  Akhtyrka, 1901, Lenbachhaus, Kunstarealm, Munich

• 

  Sunday (Old Russian), 1904, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

• 

  Couple on Horseback, 1906–07, Lenbachhaus, Munich

• 

  Blue Mountain, 1908–09, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

• 

  Houses in Munich, 1908, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

• 

  Murnau, train & castle, 1909, Lenbachhaus, Munich

Blue Rider Period (1911–1914)

Wassily Kandinsky, 1910, Landscape with Factory Chimney, oil on canvas, 66.2 cm × 82 cm (26.1 in × 32.3 in), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Kandinsky's paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and described more elaborate works as "compositions."

In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on the history of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than from his paintings. He helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artists' Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group could not integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventional artistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed a new group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as August Macke, Franz Marc, Albert Bloch, and Gabriele Münter. The group released an almanac (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia via Switzerland and Sweden.

Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), 1912, oil on canvas, 120.3 cm × 140.3 cm (47.4 in × 55.2 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show

His writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise "On the Spiritual in Art" (which was released in 1910) were both a defence and promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.

These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in the English-speaking world.^[15] As early as 1912, On the Spiritual in Art was reviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based Art News.^[16] Interest in Kandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of On the Spiritual in Art in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year in Percy Wyndham Lewis's periodical Blast, and Alfred Orage's weekly cultural newspaper The New Age. Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain, however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists' Exhibition (organised by Frank Rutter) at London's Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work being singled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer Frederick Gore in The Art News.^[17]

Sadleir's interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky's first works entering a British art collection; Sadleir's father, Michael Sadler, acquired several wood-prints and the abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII in 1913 following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. These works were displayed in Leeds, either in the university or the premises of the Leeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.^[18]

• 

  Untitled First Abstract Watercolor, 1910

• 

  The Cow, 1910, Lenbachhaus, Munich

• 

  Study for Improvisation V, 1910

• 

  Lyrical, 1911

• 

  Landscape With Two Poplars, 1912

• 

  Landscape with Red Spots, No 2, 1913

• 

  Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

• 

  Composition 6, 1913

• 

  Painting with a Red Stain, 1914

Return to Russia (1914–1921)

In Grey (1919) by Kandinsky, exhibited at the 19th State Exhibition, Moscow, 1920

The sun melts all of Moscow down to a single spot that, like a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this uniformity of red is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of a symphony that takes every colour to the zenith of life that, like the fortissimo of a great orchestra, is both compelled and allowed by Moscow to ring out.

— Wassily Kandinsky^[19]

In 1916, he met Nina Andreevskaya (1899–1980), whom he married on 11 February 1917.

From 1918 to 1921, Kandinsky was involved in the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during this period, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on form and colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow of which he was the first director. His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by the radical members of the institute as too individualistic and bourgeois. In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius.

Back in Germany and the Bauhaus (1922–1933)

Yellow-Red-Blue, 1925, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

In May 1922, he attended the International Congress of Progressive Artists and signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists".^[20]

Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The development of his works on forms study, particularly on points and line forms, led to the publication of his second theoretical book (Point and Line to Plane) in 1926. His examinations of the effects of forces on straight lines, leading to the contrasting tones of curved and angled lines, coincided with the research of Gestalt psychologists, whose work was also discussed at the Bauhaus.^[21] Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised in his works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradations—as in Yellow – red – blue (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from the constructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.

House of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky in Dessau

The two-metre-wide (6 ft 7 in) Yellow – red – blue (1925) of several main forms: a vertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; a multitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromatic circles and scattered, coloured checker-boards contribute to its delicate complexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main coloured masses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality of the work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observation—not only of forms and colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute and relative positions on the canvas and their harmony.

Kandinsky was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), formed in 1923 with Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Alexej von Jawlensky, which lectured and exhibited in the United States in 1924. Due to right-wing hostility, the Bauhaus left Weimar and settled in Dessau in 1925. Following a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany, settling in Paris.

• 

  Small worlds I, 1922, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen^[22]

• 

  On White II, 1923, Centre Pompidou, Paris

• 

  Circles in a Circle, 1923, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

• 

  Several Circles, 1926, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

• 

  Soft Hard, 1927

• 

  Inner Aliance, 1929, Albertina, Vienna

Great Synthesis (1934–1944)

Living in an apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-room studio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in his paintings—forms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist's inner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.

This period corresponds to a synthesis of Kandinsky's previous work in which he used all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his final two major compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for many years. Composition IX has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose central form gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours and coloured bands stand out against the black background of Composition X as star fragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover a large maroon mass which seems to float in the upper-left corner of the canvas. In Kandinsky's work some characteristics are obvious, while certain touches are more discreet and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who deepen their connection with his work.^[23] He intended his forms (which he subtly harmonised and placed) to resonate with the observer's soul.

• 

  Brown with supplement, 1935, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

• 

  Composition IX, 1936, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris

• 

  Composition X, 1939, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

• 

  Various Actions, 1941, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

• 

  Circle and Square, 1943, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris

Discover more about Artistic periods related topics

Upside-down painting

Upside-down painting

Most paintings are intended to be hung in a precise orientation, defining an upper part and a lower part. Some paintings are displayed upside down, sometimes by mistake since the image does not represent an easily recognizable oriented subject and lacks a signature or by a deliberate decision of the exhibitor.

Academy of Fine Arts, Munich

Academy of Fine Arts, Munich

The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria, Germany.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon.

Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Lohengrin (opera)

Lohengrin (opera)

Lohengrin, WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel Lohengrin, itself inspired by the epic of Garin le Loherain. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend.

Thought-Forms (book)

Thought-Forms (book)

Thought-Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation is a theosophical book compiled by the members of the Theosophical Society A. Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. It was originally published in 1905 in London.From the standpoint of Theosophy, it tells opinions regarding the visualization of thoughts, experiences, emotions and music. Drawings of the "thought-forms" were performed by John Varley Jr., Prince, and McFarlane.

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.

Pointillism

Pointillism

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.

Fauvism

Fauvism

Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of les Fauves, a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Henri Matisse.

Blue Rose (art group)

Blue Rose (art group)

Blue Rose was a Symbolist artist association in Moscow from 1906 to 1908.

Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of 70,550.19 km2 (27,239.58 sq mi), Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With over 13 million inhabitants, it is the second largest German state in terms of population only to North Rhine-Westphalia, but due to its large size its population density is below the German average. Bavaria's main cities are Munich, Nuremberg, and Augsburg.

Murnau am Staffelsee

Murnau am Staffelsee

Murnau am Staffelsee is a market town in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region of Bavaria, Germany.

The artist as prophet

Composition VII, Tretyakov Gallery. According to Kandinsky, this is the most complex piece he ever painted (1913)

Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher,"^[24] Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend Gabriele Münter. Composition I (1910) was destroyed by a British air raid on the city of Braunschweig in Lower Saxony on the night of 14 October 1944.^[25]

While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of Composition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky's first three Compositions. They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art", and then destroyed (along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists)

Fascinated by Christian eschatology and the perception of a coming New Age,^[26] a common theme among Kandinsky's first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it). Writing of the "artist as prophet" in his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individual and social reality. Having a devout belief in Orthodox Christianity,^[27] Kandinsky drew upon the biblical stories of Noah's Ark, Jonah and the whale, Christ's resurrection, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation, Russian folktales and the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attempting to picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imagery as symbols of the archetypes of death–rebirth and destruction–creation he felt were imminent in the pre-World War I world.

As he stated in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (see below), Kandinsky felt that an authentic artist creating art from "an internal necessity" inhabits the tip of an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating and proceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is commonplace today; what is avant garde today (and understood only by the few) is common knowledge tomorrow. The modern artist–prophet stands alone at the apex of the pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow's reality. Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modern artists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.

Composition IV and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypse by water (Composition VI), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritual communion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limits of words and images.

Artistic and spiritual theorist

Composition VI (1913)

As the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac essays and theorising with composer Arnold Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorised that (for example), yellow is the colour of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the colour of closure, and the end of things; and that combinations of colours produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. In 1871 the young Kandinsky learned to play the piano and cello.^[28][29]

Kandinsky also developed a theory of geometric figures and their relationships—claiming, for example, that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theories are explained in Point and Line to Plane (see below).

Kandinsky's legendary stage design for a performance of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" illustrates his synaesthetic concept of a universal correspondence of forms, colors and musical sounds.^[30] In 1928 in the theater of Dessau, Wassily Kandinsky realized the stage production of "Pictures at an Exhibition". In 2015 the original designs of the stage elements were animated with modern video technology and synchronized with the music according to the preparatory notes of Kandinsky and the director's script of Felix Klee.

In another episode with Münter during the Bavarian abstract expressionist years, Kandinsky was working on his Composition VI. From nearly six months of study and preparation, he had intended the work to evoke a flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth simultaneously. After outlining the work on a mural-sized wood panel, he became blocked and could not go on. Münter told him that he was trapped in his intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested he simply repeat the word uberflut ("deluge" or "flood") and focus on its sound rather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky painted and completed the monumental work in a three-day span.^[31]

Discover more about Kandinsky's conception of art related topics

List of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky

List of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky

This is an incomplete list of paintings by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944). During his life, Kandinsky was associated with the art movements of Der Blaue Reiter, Expressionism and Abstract painting. Kandinsky is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art.

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus

The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.

Franz Marc

Franz Marc

Franz Moritz Wilhelm Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of German Expressionism. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it.

Christian eschatology

Christian eschatology

Christian eschatology, a major branch of study within Christian theology, deals with "last things". Such eschatology – the word derives from two Greek roots meaning "last" (ἔσχατος) and "study" (-λογία) – involves the study of "end things", whether of the end of an individual life, of the end of the age, of the end of the world, or of the nature of the Kingdom of God. Broadly speaking, Christian eschatology focuses on the ultimate destiny of individual souls and of the entire created order, based primarily upon biblical texts within the Old and New Testaments.

Apocalypse

Apocalypse

Apocalypse is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imagery drawn from the Hebrew Bible, cosmological and (pessimistic) historical surveys, the division of time into periods, esoteric numerology, and claims of ecstasy and inspiration. Almost all are written under pseudonyms, claiming as author a venerated hero from previous centuries, as with Book of Daniel, composed during the 2nd century BCE but bearing the name of the legendary Daniel.

Eastern Orthodox Church

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the head of the Catholic Church—the pope—but the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognized by them as primus inter pares. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The Eastern Orthodox Church officially calls itself the Orthodox Catholic Church.

Jonah

Jonah

Jonah or Jonas, son of Amittai, is a prophet in the Hebrew Bible from Gath-hepher of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BCE. Jonah is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, which details his reluctance in delivering God's judgement on the city of Nineveh. Subsequently he returns to the divine mission after he is swallowed by a large sea creature and then released.

Book of Revelation

Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: apokalypsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon. It occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May 1912. The editorial team organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1912 to demonstrate their art-theoretical ideas based on the works of art exhibited. Traveling exhibitions in German and other European cities followed. The Blue Rider disbanded at the start of World War I in 1914.

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941.

C (musical note)

C (musical note)

C or Do is the first note and semitone of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale, and the fourth note of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequency has depended on historical pitch standards, and for transposing instruments a distinction is made between written and sounding or concert pitch. It has enharmonic equivalents of B♯ and D.

Wassily Kandinsky's art has a confluence of music^[32] and spirituality. With his appreciation for music of his times and kinesthetic disposition,^[33] Kandinsky's artworks have a marked style of expressionism in his early years. But he embraced all types of artistic styles of his times and his predecessors i.e. Art Nouveau (sinuous organic forms), Fauvism and Blaue Reiter (shocking colours), Surrealism (mystery) and Bauhaus (constructivism) only to move towards abstractionism as he explored spirituality in art. His object-free paintings^[34] display spiritual abstraction suggested by sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.^[35] Driven by the Christian faith and the inner necessity^[36] of an artist, his paintings have the ambiguity of the form rendered in a variety of colours as well as resistance against conventional aesthetic values of the art world.

His signature or individual style can be further defined and divided into three categories over the course of his art career: Impressions (representational element), Improvisations (spontaneous emotional reaction), Compositions (ultimate works of art).

As Kandinsky started moving away from his early inspiration from Impressionism, his paintings became more vibrant, pictographic and expressive with more sharp shapes and clear linear qualities.

But eventually, Kandinsky went further; rejecting pictorial representation with more synesthetic swirling hurricanes of colours and shapes, eliminating traditional references to depth, laying out bare and abstracted glyphs; but what remained consistent was his spiritual pursuit of expressive forms.

Emotional harmony is another salient feature in the later works of Kandinsky.^[37] With diverse dimensions and bright hues balanced through a careful juxtaposition of proportion and colours, he substantiated the universality of shapes in his artworks thus paving the way for further abstraction.

Wassily Kandinsky often used black in his paintings to heighten the impact of brightly coloured forms while his forms were often biomorphic approaches to bring surrealism in his art.^[38]

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Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: Jugendstil in German, Stile Liberty in Italian, Modernisme in Catalan, and also known as the Modern Style in English. It was popular between 1890 and 1910 during the Belle Époque period, and was a reaction against the academic art, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decoration. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and flowers. Other characteristics of Art Nouveau were a sense of dynamism and movement, often given by asymmetry or whiplash lines, and the use of modern materials, particularly iron, glass, ceramics and later concrete, to create unusual forms and larger open spaces.

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media.

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.

Style (visual arts)

Style (visual arts)

In the visual arts, style is a "... distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories" or "... any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made". It refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been the art historian's principal mode of classifying works of art. By style he selects and shapes the history of art".

Biomorphism

Biomorphism

Biomorphism models artistic design elements on naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature and living organisms. Taken to its extreme it attempts to force naturally occurring shapes onto functional devices.

Kandinsky's analyses on forms and colours result not from simple, arbitrary idea-associations but from the painter's inner experience. He spent years creating abstract, sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observing his own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his sense of colour.^[39] This subjective experience is something that anyone can do—not scientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what French philosopher Michel Henry calls "absolute subjectivity" or the "absolute phenomenological life".^[40]

Concerning the spiritual in art

Published in Munich in 1911, Kandinsky's text, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, defines three types of painting; impressions, improvisations and compositions. While impressions are based on an external reality that serves as a starting point, improvisations and compositions depict images emergent from the unconscious, though composition is developed from a more formal point of view.^[41] Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid—the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.^[42]

Colours on the painter's palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an "inner resonance"—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.^[43]

"Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul.^[44] Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces on one who looks at it attentively.^[45] This inner necessity is the right of the artist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is not founded on such a necessity.^[46] Art is born from the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breath.^[47]

The obvious properties we can see when we look at an isolated colour and let it act alone, on one side is the warmth or coldness of the colour tone, and on the other side is the clarity or obscurity of that tone.^[48] Warmth is a tendency towards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form the first great, dynamic contrast.^[49] Yellow has an eccentric movement and blue a concentric movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away.^[50] Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whose violence can be painful and aggressive.^[51] Blue is a celestial colour, evoking a deep calm.^[52] The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility and calm, which is green.^[53]

Clarity is a tendency towards white, and obscurity is a tendency towards black. White and black form the second great contrast, which is static.^[50] White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility.^[54] Black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors.^[55] The mixing of white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is near that of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despair when it becomes dark, regaining little hope when it lightens.^[56]

Red is a warm colour, lively and agitated; it is forceful, a movement in itself.^[56] Mixed with black it becomes brown, a hard colour.^[57] Mixed with yellow, it gains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on its surroundings.^[58] When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to become purple, which is a cool red.^[59] Red and green form the third great contrast, and orange and purple the fourth.^[60]

Point and Line to Plane

Points, 1920, 110.3 cm × 91.8 cm (43.4 in × 36.1 in), Ohara Museum of Art

In his writings, published in Munich by Verlag Albert Langen in 1926, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting—the point and the line. He called the physical support and the material surface on which the artist draws or paints the basic plane, or BP.^[61] He did not analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect on the observer.^[62]

A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and colour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated or resonate with other points or lines.^[63]

A line is the product of a force which has been applied in a given direction: the force exerted on the pencil or paintbrush by the artist. The produced linear forms may be of several types: a straight line, which results from a unique force applied in a single direction; an angular line, resulting from the alternation of two forces in different directions, or a curved (or wave-like) line, produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. A plane may be obtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).^[64] The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: a horizontal line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; it possesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. A vertical line corresponds with height, and offers no support; it possesses a luminous, warm tonality close to white and yellow. A diagonal possesses a more-or-less warm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal or the vertical.^[65]

A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces a straight line corresponds with lyricism; several forces which confront (or annoy) each other form a drama.^[66] The angle formed by the angular line also has an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (a triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (a circle), and similar to red for a right angle (a square).^[67]

The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. Therefore, it is composed of horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomous entity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. This tonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and vertical lines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while the verticals impart a calm, warm tonality.^[68] The artist intuits the inner effect of the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonality he wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a living being, which the artist "fertilises" and feels "breathing".^[69]

Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influences the tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, and contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition on the canvas. The above of the basic plane corresponds with looseness and to lightness, while the below evokes condensation and heaviness. The painter's job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings which are not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and the result of an effort towards inner beauty.^[70]

This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky's works which offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allow the reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes the time to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its own sensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of his soul.^[71]

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Abstract art

Abstract art

Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

Michel Henry

Michel Henry

Michel Henry was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan.

Spirituality

Spirituality

The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.

Pyramid

Pyramid

A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or of any polygon shape. As such, a pyramid has at least three outer triangular surfaces. The square pyramid, with a square base and four triangular outer surfaces, is a common version.

Shape

Shape

A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie on a plane, in contrast to solid 3D shapes. A two-dimensional shape or two-dimensional figure may lie on a more general curved surface.

Ohara Museum of Art

Ohara Museum of Art

The Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki was the first collection of Western art to be permanently exhibited in Japan. The museum opened in 1930 and originally consisted almost entirely of French paintings and sculptures of the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection has now expanded to include paintings of the Italian Renaissance and of the Dutch and Flemish 17th century. Well-known American and Italian artists of the 20th century are also included in the collection.

After graduating in 1892, Kandinsky married his cousin, Anja Chimiakin, and became a lecturer on Jurisprudence at the University of Moscow.^[72]

In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited Gabriele Münter to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted, and their relationship became more personal than professional. In 1911, the German expressionist painter was one of several artists joining Kandinsky in his Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) group, which ended with the onset of World War I.

Kandinsky and Münter became engaged in the summer of 1903, while he was still married to Anja, and travelled extensively through Europe, Russia and North Africa until 1908. He separated from Anja in 1911.^[72]

From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky travelled across Europe until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau.

He returned to Moscow in 1914 when the first World War broke out. In 1916, he met Nina Nikolaevna Andreevskaya (1899–1980), whom he married on 11 February 1917, when she was 17 or 18 and he was 50 years old. At the end of 1917 they had a son, Wsevolod, or Lodya as he was called in the family. Lodya died in June 1920. There were no more children.^[72]

Photograph of Nina Kandinsky in 1924 by Hugo Erfurth, the German photographer

After the Russian Revolution, he had opportunities in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933.

He then moved to France with his wife, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art.

He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 13 December 1944, three days prior to his 78th birthday.

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Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May 1912. The editorial team organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1912 to demonstrate their art-theoretical ideas based on the works of art exhibited. Traveling exhibitions in German and other European cities followed. The Blue Rider disbanded at the start of World War I in 1914.

Murnau am Staffelsee

Murnau am Staffelsee

Murnau am Staffelsee is a market town in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region of Bavaria, Germany.

Hugo Erfurth

Hugo Erfurth

Hugo Erfurth was a German photographer known for his portraits of celebrities and cultural figures of the early twentieth century.

Art market

In 2012, Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firm Volkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist's last record was set in 1990 when Sotheby's sold his Fugue (1914) for $20.9 million.^[73] On 16 November 2016 Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's Rigide et courbé (rigid and bent), a large 1935 abstract painting, for $23.3 million, a new record for Kandinsky.^[74][75] Solomon R. Guggenheim originally purchased the painting directly from the artist in 1936, but it was not exhibited after 1949, and was then sold at auction to a private collector in 1964 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.^[75]

In popular culture

The 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation refers to a "double-sided Kandinsky" painting.^[76] No such painting is known to exist; in the 1993 film version of the play, the double-sided painting is portrayed as having Kandinsky's 1913 painting Black Lines on one side and his 1926 painting Several Circles on the other side.^[77]

The 1999 film Double Jeopardy makes numerous references to Kandinsky, and a piece of his, Sketch, figures prominently in the plot-line. The protagonist, Elizabeth Parsons (Ashley Judd), utilises the registry entry for the work to track down her husband under his new alias. Two variations of the almanac cover of Blue Rider are also featured in the film.^[78]

In 2014, Google commemorated Kandinsky's 148th birthday by featuring a Google Doodle based on his abstract paintings.^[79][80]

In the 2015 movie Longest ride there is a story within the story telling about Ruth and Ira. Ruth is interested in art and they visit the Black Mountain College where Ruth tells Ira about Kandinski who came along and broke all the laws of the discipline.

In Season 4 of Netflix's Stranger Things, his 1903 colour woodblock "The Singer" can be seen in Nancy Wheeler's bedroom. This specific season has strong themes about the power of music.

A picture-book biography entitled The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art was published in 2014. Its illustrations by Mary GrandPre earned it a 2015 Caldecott Honor.

His grandson was musicology professor and writer Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky (1918–2000), whose career was both focused on and centred in Russia.^[81][82]

Exhibitions

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will stage the exhibition Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle from October 8, 2021 to September 5, 2022, in conjunction with a series of solo exhibitions featuring the work of contemporary artists Etel Adnan, Jennie C. Jones, and Cecilia Vicuña.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum held a major retrospective of Kandinsky's work from 2009 to 2010, called Kandinsky.^[83] In 2017, a selection of Kandinsky's work was on view at the Guggenheim, "Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim".^[84]

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., held an exhibit from June 11 to September 4, 2011, called ″Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence,″ featuring ″Painting with White Border″ and its preparatory studies.^[85]

Kandinskij. L'opera 1900–1940, Palazzo Roverella [it], Rovigo, Italy.^[86]

Discover more about Miscellaneous information related topics

Christie's

Christie's

Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François-Henri Pinault. Sales in 2015 totalled £4.8 billion. In 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold for $400 million at Christie's in New York, at the time the highest price ever paid for a single painting at an auction.

Kunstmuseum Winterthur

Kunstmuseum Winterthur

The Kunst Museum Winterthur is an art museum in Winterthur, Switzerland run by the local Kunstverein. From its beginnings, the activities of the Kunstverein Winterthur were focused on contemporary art – first Impressionism, then Post-Impressionism and especially Les Nabis, through post-World War II and recently created works by Richard Hamilton, Mario Merz and Gerhard Richter.

Solomon R. Guggenheim

Solomon R. Guggenheim

Solomon Robert Guggenheim was an American businessman and art collector. He is best known for establishing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim.

Six Degrees of Separation (play)

Six Degrees of Separation (play)

Six Degrees of Separation is a play written by American playwright John Guare that premiered in 1990. The play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Tony Award for Best Play.

Six Degrees of Separation (film)

Six Degrees of Separation (film)

Six Degrees of Separation is a 1993 American comedy-drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Fred Schepisi, adapted from John Guare's Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1990 play of the same name.

Double Jeopardy (1999 film)

Double Jeopardy (1999 film)

Double Jeopardy is a 1999 American crime thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Greenwood, and Gillian Barber. Released on September 24, the film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $177 million. It was remade in Hindi as Jurm in 2005.

Google

Google

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the area of artificial intelligence. Its parent company Alphabet is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational philosophy, which emphasized holistic learning and the study of art as central to a liberal arts education. Many of the college's faculty and students were or would go on to become highly influential in the arts, including Josef and Anni Albers, Charles Olson, Ruth Asawa, Max Dehn, Walter Gropius, Ray Johnson, Robert Motherwell, Dorothea Rockburne, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, Franz Kline, Aaron Siskind, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and Mary Caroline Richards. Although it was quite notable during its lifetime, the school closed in 1957 after 24 years due to funding issues; Camp Rockmont for Boys now sits on the campus' site. The history and legacy of Black Mountain College are preserved and extended by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, located in downtown Asheville, North Carolina.

Caldecott Medal

Caldecott Medal

The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The Caldecott and Newbery Medals are considered the most prestigious American children's book awards. Beside the Caldecott Medal, the committee awards a variable number of citations to runners-up they deem worthy, called the Caldecott Honor or Caldecott Honor Books.

Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky

Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky

Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky was a Soviet musicologist who is known for his writings on contemporary Russian musical life and Russian music of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to writing a biography on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, he penned seminal writings on the works of Mily Balakirev, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1969 he was named a Meritorious Artist of the Russian Federation.

Rovigo

Rovigo

Rovigo is a city and comune in the Veneto region of Northeast Italy, the capital of the eponymous province.

In July 2001 Jen Lissitzky, the son of artist El Lissitzky, filed a restitution claim against the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland for Kandinsky's "Improvisation No. 10".^[87] A settlement was reached in 2002.^[88]

In 2013 the Lewenstein family filed a claim for the restitution of Kandinsky's Painting with Houses held by the Stedelijk Museum.^[89][90] In 2020, a committee established by the Dutch minister of culture found fault with the behaviour of the Restitution Committee, causing a scandal where two of its members, including its chairman, resigned. Later that year, a court in Amsterdam ruled that the Stedelijk Museum could retain the painting from the Jewish Lewenstein collection, despite the Nazi theft.^[91][92] However, in August 2021 the Amsterdam City Council decided to return the painting to the Lewenstein family.^[93][94]

In 2017 Robert Colin Lewenstein, Francesca Manuela Davis and Elsa Hannchen Guidotti filed suit against Bayerische Landesbank ("BLB") for the restitution of Kandinsky's Das Bunte Leben. ^[95][96]

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El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.

Beyeler Foundation

Beyeler Foundation

The Beyeler Foundation or Fondation Beyeler with its museum in Riehen, near Basel (Switzerland), owns and oversees the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler, which features modern and traditional art. The Beyeler Foundation museum includes a space for special exhibitions staged to complement the permanent collection. In 2006, approximately 340,000 persons visited the museum. The number of visitors in 2016 was 332,000. The Beyeler Foundation is the most visited museum of art in all of Switzerland. The museum is properly funded, and it receives annual grants from the cantons of Basel City and Basel County and the commune of Riehen. Major partners of the Foundation are Bayer AG, Novartis and Swiss bank UBS.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Das Bunte Leben

Das Bunte Leben

Das Bunte Leben is a 1907 tempera painting by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky.