Wassily Kandinsky

Title: The Life and Work of Wassily Kandinsky
Author: Paul Flux
Illustrator: Sam Thompson
(All works of art by Wassily Kandinsky)
Publisher: Reed Educational & Professional Publishing
Copyright: 2002
ISBN: 1-58810-607-1
Genre: Biography
Library Location: Amarillo Public Library

“Music is the ultimate teacher.”
Wassily Kandinsky




Summary: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1904) was born in Moscow, Russia, but after his parents were divorced in 1871, his aunt in Odessa, Russia raised Wassily. After growing up, marrying and teaching law, Wassily began studying art in Munich, Germany. His art was strongly influenced by his extensive travel in France and Russia and especially by the artist Henri Matisse, who painted large, bold representational paintings using bright color. After seeing the art of Matisse, Kandinsky began to take more risks in his paintings and created the first truly abstract paintings filled with shapes and colors. In 1921, when WWI was over, Wassily began teaching at the Bauhaus, a famous art school in Germany. But in 1933 Hitler took power in Germany, closed the Bauhaus, and Kandinsky moved to Paris, France. For the last 11 years of his life, he continued to create abstract paintings that expressed his feelings through abstract shapes and color.

Personal Response: This is a beautiful little book that simply relates the major events of Wassily Kandinsky’s life for young readers. More importantly, it includes many color reproductions of Kandinsky’s paintings, showing how his work developed from realistic work, to realistic painting with heightened colors and simplified shapes, to cheerful, brightly-colored abstracts during happy times in Kandinsky’s life, to the even more simplified geometric shapes of the years he taught at the Bauhaus, and finally to moody abstract works with darker colors reflecting his illness during World War II. I like the way the author has clearly compared the elements of Kandinskys’ paintings with the events of his life.

Suggested Use in Classroom: I believe that reading this book can be effective in teaching young art students about the “Father of Abstraction”, Wassily Kandinsky and his ideas behind his “invention” of abstraction. Kandinsky believed that abstract art could communicate in the same way that music (without words) communicates, on the level of feelings. He studied human emotional response to color, shape, line, value and form and used his findings to communicate through his art.
After reading this book, students could discuss in class how different colors make them feel and think about what ideas we tend to associate with those different colors and why. We could analyze Kandinskys’ individual paintings in terms of what events were occurring in the world and in his life at the time of their creation. Learners could experience for themselves some of Kandinsky’s ideas by painting in watercolor to music and self-observing how different kinds of music make them feel and how these feelings affect the colors they use and the rhythms they express through their arm and hand movements. We could discuss why people might enjoy paintings that have no recognizable image.