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.

Quotes from Kandinsky

• "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." (On the Spiritual In Art)
• "Painting is an art, and the art in its whole is not a vain objets 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." (On the Spiritual In Art)
• "Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful." (On the Spiritual In Art)
• "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." (Point and line to plane)
• "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." (Point and line to plane)
• "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." (Point and line to plane)
• "In this painting, 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." (Looks on the past)
• "The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit." (article entitled On the question of the form)