WASSILY KANDINSKY, his quotes on art theory, composition color & line – artist in Blaue Reiter + biography & life story
Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), his quotes on abstract painting art, composition, color, line and the meaning of music in his paintings. Kandinsky was co-founder of Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider with Franz Marc; he was moreover the writer of ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ which had a tremendous impact in modern art after 1900. Kandinsky lived and painted till 1914 in Murnau (South Germany) with woman painter Gabriele Münter. They painted together a lot in open air with Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and the young Paul Klee. Later Kandinsky was teaching at the German famous Bauhaus with Paul Klee and Josef Albers.
* At the bottom more life biography facts & art links for Kandinsky.
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Kandinsky: ‘Composition VII’, 1913 |
Wassily Kandinsky, his artist quotes on composition, color, line & ‘Spiritual in art’
– The work comes into the world at an undetermined hour, from a source still unknown, but it comes inevitably… .Suffering, searching, tormented souls, deeply sundered by the conflict between spirit and matter. Discovery! The part that is living in both animate and inanimate nature. Solace is the phenomena – the outer, the inner. Anticipation of joy. The call. To speak of mystery in terms of mystery. Is this not content? Is this not the conscious and unconsciousness ‘goal’ of the compelling urge to create? We feel sorry for those who have the power to speak for art, and do not. We feel sorry for those whose souls are deaf to the voice of art.
* KANDINSKY on art theory, composition and color; his quotes on abstract painting, music and line; source: catalogue of the 2nd exhibition of the ‘Neue Künstlervereinigung, Murnau, August 1910 (Russian painter, co-founder of ‘Blaue Reiter’ and famous for his book ‘Spiritual in art’, his series ‘Improvisations’ and Murnau landscapes; at the bottom links for more biography & history facts)
– The impressions we receive, which often appear merely chaotic, consist of three elements; the impression of the color of the object, its form, and of its combined color and form, i.e., of the object itself. At this point the individuality of the artist comes to the front and disposes, as he wills, these three elements. It is clear, therefore, that the choice of object (i.e., of one of the elements in the harmony of form) must be decided only by a corresponding vibration in the human soul…(Munich, 1910)
* KANDINSKY on art theory, composition and color; his quotes on abstract painting, music and line; source: “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 450
– Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this question. As every word spoken arouses an inner vibration, so likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of this possibility is to limit one’s power of expression. That is, at any rate, the case at present (1910, fh). But besides this answer to the question, there is another, and one which art can always employ to any question beginning with ‘must’. There is no must in art, because art is free. (Munich, 1910)
* KANDINSKY on art theory, composition and color; his quotes on abstract painting, music and line; source: “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 450
– There is no form, there is nothing in the world which says nothing. Often – it is true – the message does not reach our soul, either because it has no meaning in and for itself, or – as is more likely – because it has not been conveyed to the right place… …Every serious work rings inwardly, like the calm and dignified words: ‘Here I am!’
* KANDINSKY on art theory, composition and color; his quotes on abstract painting, music and line; source: ”Concerning the spiritual in Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1911.
– Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul. (1912/13)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Abstract Art”, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, 1990.
– … Lohengrin at the Court theatre in Moscow and the painting of Monet: the Hayststacks… …that stamped my life and shook me to the depths of my being. (remembering his youth in Moscow, fh)
* KANDINSKY on art theory, composition and color; his quotes on abstract painting, music and line; source: ”Abstract Art”, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, 1990.
-In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings. (letter, after the performance of Schönberg’s second string quartet and the ‘Three piano pieces’, fh)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: a letter to Schönberg, 1911.
– …but as well as the body, the spirit fortifies itself and develops itself by the exercise. As a neglected body which becomes weak and finally impotent, the spirit becomes weaker. The innate feeling of the artist is like the talent of the Gospel which must not be buried. The artist which lets its gifts unemployed is the lazy servant.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912.
– Painting is an art, and the ‘art’ in its whole ‘is not a vain objects creation’ which get lost in the void, but a power which has a goal and must serve to the evolution and to the refinement of the human soul, to the moving of the Triangle. It is the language, which speaks to the soul, in its proper form, of things which are the ”daily bread” of the soul and which it can receive only under this form.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912.
– The artist must train not only his eye, but his soul
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912.
– The artist must have something to say, mastery over form is not his goal but adaption of form to its inner meaning.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912.
– In a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completed abstracted. (on making abstraction, fh)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912
– …Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912
– Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hands which plays, touching one key or another, purposively, to cause vibrations in the Soul.
* Kandinsky, source of artist quotes on abstraction, painting art and life: ”On the Spiritual In Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1912
– All means (in painting, fh) are sacred when they are dictated by inner necessity. All means are reprehensible when they do not spring from the fountain of inner necessity… …The artist must be blind to ‘recognized’ and ‘unrecognized’ form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”Concerning the spiritual in Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1911
– If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works which are mere geometric design, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is not sufficient aim in itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetics or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of ‘beauty’. It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous color and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no further than the nerves, because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit, which they call forth, are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
– If the artist has outer and inner eyes for nature, nature rewards him by giving him inspiration.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 14
– The destruction of the atom (the split of it, in modern physics, fh) seemed to me to be the same as the destruction of the world… …science to me appeared to be dead: its most important basis was only a lunacy, a mistake perpetrated by learned men… …who blindly mistook one object for another.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 16
– …the mysterious expression of the mysterious…( description of art, fh)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 17
– In this painting ( Moscow, fh), I was in fact in quest for a certain hour, which was and which remains always the most beautiful hour of the day in Moscow. The sun is already low and has reached its highest force, which it has searched all the day, to which it has aspired all the day…. …The sun dissolves all Moscow in a spot, which as a frenzied tuba makes entered into vibration all the inner being, the whole soul… …Rendering this hour seemed the biggest, the most impossible of the happiness for an artist. These impressions renewed every sunny day. They brought me a joy which shattered me until the bottom of the soul, and which reached until ecstasy.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”Looks on the past”, Wassily Kandinsky, in ‘Der Sturm’, Berlin 1913
– At that time (around 1904 – 1905, fh) I tried, by means of lines and by distribution of mottled points of colours (as in the tempera painting on paper: ‘Russian Beauty in a Landscape’ he made in 1905, fh) to express the musical spirit of Russia. Other pictures of that period reflected the contradictions and later the eccentricities of Russia.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 29
– The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ”On the question of the form”, Wassily Kandinsky.
– What thus appears a mighty collapse in objective terms is, when one isolates its sound, a living paeans of praise, the hymn of that new creation that follows upon the destruction of the world. (remark on destruction, in creating his ‘Composition 4′, 1913)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Abstract Art”, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, 1990 (Russian painter, co-founder of ‘Blaue Reiter’ and famous for his book ‘Spiritual in art’, his series ‘Improvisations’ and Murnau landscapes; at the bottom links for more biography & history facts)
– …I let myself go. (in his Murnau-paintings, circa 1908 – 1912, fh) I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canvas with the knife (Gabriele Münter did the same; they worked closely together that period, fh) and made them sing out as strongly as I could. Within me sounded the memory of early evening in Moscow, before my eyes was the strong, colour-saturated scale of the Munich light and atmosphere, which thundered deeply in the shadows.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 31.
– The horse carries the rider with power and speed. But the rider controls the horse. Talent carries the artist to great heights with power and speed. But the artist directs his talent. That is the element of ‘consciousness’, of ‘calculation’ in the work – or whatever else one chooses to call it.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 31.
– In many ways art is similar to religion. Its development consists not in new discoveries which invalidate the old truths (as is obviously the case in science). Its development consists in sudden illuminations, similar to lightning, in explosions, which burst in the sky like fireworks… …this illumination shows with blinding light new perspectives, new truths, which are basically nothing but the organic development, the further organic growth of the earlier wisdom… …Was the New Testament possible without the Old? Could our time, that of the threshold of the ‘third’ revelation, be thinkable without the second?
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 33.
– Painting is a thundering conflict of different worlds, which in and out of the battle with one another are intended to create the new world, which is called the world of art. Each work arises technically in a way similar to that in which the cosmos arose – through catastrophes, which from the chaotic roaring of the instruments finally create a symphony, the music of the spheres. The creation of the work is the creation of worlds.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 34.
– …the long Russian word for creation proisvedenie, so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German, express for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.< br />
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, music and line: footnote in his autobiography in German translation, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
– The first colours which made a strong impression on me were light juice green, white, crimson red, black and yellow ochre. These memories go back to the third year of my life. I saw these colours on various objects which are not as clear in my mind as the colours themselves.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 9
– …emotion that I experienced on first seeing the fresh paint come out of the tube… … the impression of colours strewn over the palette: of colours – alive, waiting, as yet unseen and hidden in their little tubes…
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 9.
– I thought that the painter had no right to paint so unclearly… (but)…the first faint doubt as to the importance of an ‘object’ as the necessary element in painting (remembering later his seeing of one of the paintings ‘Haystacks’ made by Monet, for the first time in his life, in Moscow in 1895, fh)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ‘Autobiography’, Wassily Kandinsky, 1918; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 10
– Every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways. These two ways are not arbitrary, but are bound up with the phenomenon – developing out of its nature and characteristics: Externally – or – inwardly.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, circle, music and line: ”Point and line to plane”, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1926
– The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero… …Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular ”union of silence and speech”. The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Point and line to plane”, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1926.
– The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static to the dynamic occurs… …The forces coming from without which transform the point into a line, can be very diverse. The variation in lines depends upon the number of these forces and upon their combinations.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: ”Point and line to plane”, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1926.
– You mention the circle and I agree with your definition… …why does the circle fascinates me? It is (1) the most modern form, but asserts itself unconditionally, (2) a precise but inexhaustible variable, (3) simultaneously stable and unstable, (4) simultaneously loud and soft, (5) a single tension that caries countless tensions within it. The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form, and in balance. Of the three primary forms (triangle, square, circle), it points most clearly to the fourth dimension. (around 1926?, fh)
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, circle, music and line: a letter to Will Grohmann; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 36.
– Content is nothing but the sum of organized tensions. From this point of view one can discover the basic identity of the rules of composition in all arts – always accepting that the arts can only represent their object materially by means of organised reactions… …already today one can safely assume that the roots of laws of composition are the same for art as they are for nature.
* Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily) biography facts & artist quotes on art and life; early abstract painting, composition, color, circle, music and line: ‘Analysis of the Primary Elements of Painting’, W. Kandinsky, 1928.
– Approaching it in one way, I see no essential difference between a line one calls ‘abstract’ and a fish. But rather an essential likeness. This isolated line and the isolated fish alike are living beings with forces peculiar to them, though latent. They are forces of expression for these beings and of expression on human beings, because each has an impressive ‘look’ which manifests itself by its expression. But the voice of these latent forces is faint and limited. It is the environment of the line and the fish that brings about a miracle: the latent forces awaken, the expression becomes radiant… …The environment is the composition. The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions (expressions) of every part of the work. (Paris, March 1935)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 451.
– …approaching it in another way, there is an essential difference between a line and a fish. And that is that the fish can swim, eat, and be eaten. It has, then, capacities of which the line is deprived. These capacities of the fish are necessary extras for the fish itself and for the kitchen, but not for a painting… …that’s why I like the line better than the fish – at least in my painting. (Paris, March 1935)
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 451.
– Each spiritual age expresses its special character in a form which corresponds exactly to its character. Each age in this way characterises its true ‘physiognomy’, full of expression and strength. Thus in all spiritual areas ‘yesterday’ is transformed into ‘today’. But apart from this, art possesses a further quality which it alone possesses: that quality which enables one to divine the ‘tomorrow’ today – a strength which is both creative and prophetic.
* Kandinsky: biography facts by his artist quotes on life, early abstract painting, composition, color, circle and line: * quotation from Kandinsky’s last theoretical statement, 1942; as quoted in ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 38 (Russian painter and co-founder of ‘Blaue Reiter’ with Franz Marc; famous for his book ‘Spiritual in art’, his series ‘Improvisations’ and the many Murnau landscapes he painted with woman painter Gabriele Münter; at the bottom links for more biography & history facts)
Kandinsky, his not-sourced artist quotes by the Russian painter of Blaue Reiter / Bauhaus
– Art, like love, has a fine detail to it. You need to know exactly what is going on. (artist quote, Kandinsky)
– What is right artistically can only be attained through feeling. (artist quote on feeling in creation of art, Kandinsky)
– My predilection for what is hidden, for the mysterious, saved me from the unhappy influence of popular art. (artist quote on the mystery in life, Kandinsky)
– Both of us loved blue, Franz Marc horses, I riders. Hence the name ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (The Blue Rider; title of the publication, the ‘Munich Almanac’, edited by Kandinsky and Franz Marc, fh) (artist quote on Franz Marc nd Blue Rider, Kandinsky)
– Just because an artist uses ‘abstract methods’, it does not mean he is an ‘abstract’ artist. It does not even mean he is an artist. (artist quote on ‘abstract’, Kandinsky)
– A work of art consists of two elements, the inner and outer. The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist… …it has the capacity to evoke similar emotions in the observer… …it must exist otherwise the work of art is a shame. (artist quote on inner and outer side of creating art, Kandinsky)
– There is no must in art because art is free. (artist quote, by Kandinsky)
– The purpose of my book concerning the ‘Spiritual in Art’ and ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (the German name fot The Blue Rider artist group and their magazine of modern artists in Munich, fh) was to awaken the ability to experience the spiritual in material and abstract things… …the desire to bring out this joyful ability in people who don’t have it… …it was the main purpose of both publications. (artist quote on his written books, Kandinsky)
– The medieval pictures I painted were inspired by the impressions of old Schwabing. (artist quote on medieval images , by Kandinsky)
– Let the viewer stroll around within the picture, to force him to forget himself and so to become a part of the picture. (artist quote on th viewer of art, Kandinsky)
– I more or less dissolved the objects in my Improvisations (series of his paintings which he started to paint more or less abstract, around 1912-1915, fh) so that not all of them could be recognised at once, so that the spiritual overtones could be gradually experienced by the viewer one after the other… …and here and there even purely abstract forms came in of their own accord; in other words, that had to have a purely painterly effect. (artist quote on his series Improvisations paintings, byKandinsky)
– As has been said… …it is impossible to make clear the aims of a work of art by means of words. (artist quote, Kandinsky)
– I only want to paint good, necessary, living pictures, which are experienced properly by at least a few viewers. (artist quote on creating living art, by Kandinsky)
– I saw all my colours in spirit. Wild, almost mad lines drew themselves in front of me. (Wassily Kadinsky’s remark on seeing Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ in colors, fh)
– Humanity is like a triangle, with a long visionary at the apex. (artist quote on humanity, Kandinsky)
art links for more biography facts and history information about the artist Wassily Kandinsky
* biography of the artist painter Wassily Kandinsky, on Wikipedia
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* artist quotes by Vasily Kandinsky, in Dutch language
