This famous work by a pioneer in the movement to free art from the bonds of tradition explores the role of the line, point, and other key elements of non-objective painting. 127 illustrations.

Pioneering work by the great modernist painter, considered by many to be the father of abstract art and a leader in the movement to free art from traditional bonds. 12 illustrations.

The founder of abstract art The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of twentieth-century art. Nowadays he is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting. Together with Franz Marc and others he founded the group of artists known as the "Blauer Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the "First Abstract Watercolour" of 1910. In his theoretical writings Kandinsky repeatedly sought the proximity of music; and just as in music, where the individual notes constitute the medium whose effect stems from harmony and euphony, Kandinsky was aiming for a pure concord of colour through the interplay of various shades. Gauguin had demanded that everything "must be sacrificed to pure colours". Kandinsky was the first to realise this and thus to influence a whole range of artists. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Twenty-first-century Kandinsky: a reappraisal of the Russian abstractionist's art, life and thought through the extraordinary collection of the iconic museum One of the foremost artistic innovators of abstraction in the 20th century, Vasily Kandinsky sought to liberate painting from its ties to the natural world and promote the spiritual in art. This richly illustrated publication looks at Kandinsky anew, through a critical lens, reframing our understanding of this vital figure of European modernism, who was also a prolific aesthetic theorist and writer. A series of thematic essays considers his engagement with avant-garde artistic communities including the Bauhaus, his relationship to improvisation and music, his travels in Europe and Russia, and the influences behind his self-declared anarchist mode of abstraction, among other topics. Tracing Kandinsky's life and work through his years in Moscow, several cities in Germany, and Paris, the texts offer striking new insights into an artist whose creative production and style were intimately tied to a sense of place--and displacement--and evolved amid the political and social upheavals catalyzed by the Russian Revolution and World Wars I and II. Kandinsky's history is closely linked to that of the Guggenheim Museum. Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting the artist's work in 1929; a year later, they met at the Bauhaus, in Dessau. This book features more than half of the museum's deep holdings of works by Kandinsky, presenting the full arc of his artistic development and career. Included are paintings in oil and oil with sand, reverse-glass paintings, as well as woodcuts, watercolors and drawings on paper. An illustrated chronicle of Kandinsky's life and career, including selected exhibitions and publications, rounds out the volume.

Now in an updated English edition with full color illustrations, Kandinsky's fascinating and witty artist's book represents a crucial moment in the painter's move toward abstraction.

The Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) art movement was founded in 1911, by the young painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and remained active in Europe until 1914. Originally published in Munich, in 1912, and edited by Kandinsky and Marc, The Blaue Reiter Almanac presented the movement's synthesis of international culture to the European avant-garde at large. In both the selection of the essays and its innovative interplay of word and image, the Almanac remains one of the most critically important works on artistic theory and culture of the twentieth century. This edition, long unavailable in English and indispensable to any student of modernism, includes the original documents and musical notations, as well as essays by Kandinsky, Schonberg, Marc, and others, and an extensive critical introduction, placing the Blaue Reiter in context for contemporary readers.