Page 59 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

Kandinsky’s seminal treatise On the Spiritual in Art was
published in December 1911. He and Marc withdrew from
the NKVM that month, and shortly thereafter the Blaue
Kandinsky in front of his painting Dominant Curve (Courbe dominante, Reiter group’s first exhibition was held at the Moderne
1936), 1936. Photo: Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris. © Galerie. In 1912 the second Blaue Reiter show was held at
Lipnitzki/Roger Violett/Getty Images.
the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich. Kandinsky’s first solo show
was held at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1912. In 1913
one of his works was included in the Armory Show in New
York and the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at the Der Sturm
gallery in Berlin. Kandinsky lived in Russia from 1914 to
1921, principally in Moscow, where he held a position at the
People’s Commissariat of Education.

Kandinsky began teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar,
Germany, in 1922. In 1923 he was given his first solo
show in New York by the Société Anonyme, of which he
became vice-president. Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky,
Kandinsky, and Paul Klee made up the Blaue Vier (Blue Four)
group, formed in 1924. Kandinsky moved with the Bauhaus
to Dessau in 1925 and became a German citizen in 1928.
After the Bauhaus closed under pressure from the Nazi
government in 1933, Kandinsky settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine,
near Paris; he acquired French citizenship in 1939. Fifty-
seven of his works were confiscated by the Nazis in the
1937 purge of so-called “degenerate art.” Kandinsky died on
December 13, 1944, in Neuilly.

Vasily Kandinsky, Vasily Kandinsky,
Three Sounds (Drei Klänge), August 1926. Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 23 1/2 Several Circles (Einige Kreise), January–February 1926. Oil on canvas, 55
inches (60.3 x 59.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 3/8 x 55 1/4 inches (140.7 x 140.3 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 41.282 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 41.283

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