Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky (Russian: ??????? ??????????, first name sometimes spelled as "Vasily," "Vassily" or "Vasilii") (December 4, 1866 – December 13, 1944) was a Russian-born French painter and art theorist. One of the most important 20th-century artists, alongside Picasso and Matisse, he is credited with painting the first abstract works in the history of modern art.

Quotations on Kandinsky

• " has not only produced a work whose sensorial magnificence and invention richness eclipses those of its most remarkable contemporaries ; he has given moreover an explicit theory of abstract painting, exposing its principles with the highest precision and the highest clarity. In this way the painted work is coupled with an ensemble of texts that enlighten it and that make at the same time of Kandinsky one of the major theorists of the art." (Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky)
• "Kandinsky has been fascinated by the expression power of linear forms. The pathos of a force entering in action and whose victorious effort is annoyed by no obstacle, that?s lyricism. That?s because the straight line proceeds from the action of a unique force with no opposition that its domain is lyricism. When on the opposite two forces are in presence and enter in conflict, as this is the case with the curve or with the angular line, we are in the drama." (Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky)
• "Kandinsky calls abstract the content that painting must express, that?s to say this invisible life that we are. In such a way that the Kandinskian equation, to which we have alluded to, can be written in reality as follows : Interior = interiority = invisible = life = pathos = abstract." (Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible, on Kandinsky)