Wassily KandinskyArticle Free Pass Wassily Kandinsky, Russian in
full Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky (born December 4 [December 16,
New Style], 1866, Moscow, Russia—died December 13, 1944,
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), Russian-born artist, one of the
first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. After
successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential
Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”; 1911–14) and
began completely abstract painting. His forms evolved from fluid
and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic (e.g.,
Tempered Élan, 1944). Kandinsky’s mother was a Muscovite, one of
his great-grandmothers a Mongolian princess, and his father a
native of Kyakhta, a Siberian town near the Chinese border; the
boy thus grew up with a cultural heritage that was partly
European and partly Asian. His family was genteel, well-to-do,
and fond of travel; while still a child he became familiar with
Venice, Rome, Florence, the Caucasus, and the Crimean Peninsula.
At Odessa, where his pa