A new concept

After a period spent wandering through Central and Western Europe and Russia, in 1908 Kandinsky settled in the Bavarian town of Murnau. Meanwhile, he met Gabriele Münter, who for a time would be his lover as well as his work partner. A new concept gradually begins to germinate in him: he studies theosophy, expands his acquaintances, even thinks of a form of “abstract” theater and helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Association of Munich).

Destiny

One of the paintings on display, Destiny (Red wall), is a masterpiece from 1909 in which Kandinsky returns to the elements dear to him in those years, but above all aims to experience the resonance of chromatic nuances in the spirit of the observer: here he resorts to red, “the color of self-confident strength”. His revolution was beginning.

The road to abstract art

Of course, it did not happen suddenly: the process that led Kandinsky to abstractionism, as mentioned, was the result of a gradual development rooted in his innermost soul. Outstanding works such as Boat Trip, Improvisation 11 and Black Spot I, made between 1910 and 1912, illustrate his research well: here then is the simplification of the form, here is the stylization, here is the liberation of the creative force of colour, called non more to “represent”, but to evoke psychological, sound, tactile sensations.

An “absolute” painting

It is an art that claims its distance from any imitative purpose. The reflection on the perceptive faculties, the desire for an “absolute” painting, the aspiration to build the chromatic syntax on different foundations, freeing it from the naturalistic function: here are the explosive ingredients that will make one of the most sensational revolutions of the 20th century. Carried out, slowly, by a distinguished and thoughtful gentleman of about 45 years of age.

The spiritual in art

Kandinsky may have also been slow, but he was exceptionally well-educated, informed and contemplative. Indeed, he was a great theorist as well as a great artist. In December 1911, for example, the Munich publisher Reinhard Piper printed his Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the spiritual in art), a fundamental treatise in the genesis of abstract art.

Der Blaue Reiter and the rejection of academicism

A week later, in the Thannhauser gallery in Munich, the first exhibition of the group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) opens, which includes, in addition to Kandinsky, artists such as Paul Klee, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc and August Macke. What unites them are neither objectives nor a common language but the search for an inner necessity: in the almanac Der Blaue Reiter of 1912, of which Kandinskji signs the cover, the primitivist question is addressed, whose roots are identified in medieval art, in Russian folk and children’s drawings. The goal is to illustrate the extreme variety of possible forms of expression and the rejection of an academicism unable to touch the strings of the soul.

Atonality and the “emancipation from dissonance”

Touched by expert musicians, the strings of violins, violas and cellos vibrated gloriously one early January evening in 1911, while an ecstatic Kandinsky watched the performance of the String Quartet No. 2 in F sharp minor op. 10 by Arnold Schönberg (Vienna, 1874-Los Angeles, 1951), followed by some Lieder by him and the Three pieces for piano op. 11. Kandinsky was very struck by those three pieces in which, more than in others, Schoenberg had experimented with the resources of the new atonality (which he preferred to call “emancipation from dissonance”), adopting a dry and internalized musical language. For this reason, on 18 January 1911, while the echo of that concert still reverberates in him, he wrote a letter which became famous in which, addressing the composer who had dropped the traditional hierarchical bonds between single notes and tonal chords, he confessed that «in your works you have achieved what I, in a naturally indeterminate form, wanted to find in music».

Beyond representation

This slow creation of a new world was achieved between 1915 and 1917. As revealed by the masterpieces on display in this room, by then the Russian master had committed completely to abstract art, or “non-objective painting”. It is a world in which color gets rid of the line, it no longer has any representative function but is an autonomous means, which serves to arouse sensations, to manifest the soul of the artist, his perceptions not only visual but also sound, tactile , psychological. In the meantime, while Kandinsky is carrying out his peaceful artistic revolution, the outside world has much bloodier ones in store: the political situation worsens, the First World War breaks out and so Kandinsky, at the end of 1914, after a few months spent in Switzerland, he decides to return to his homeland and settles in Moscow.

The return to Germany: the Bauhaus

Truth be told, the outside world was changing and, as far as Kandinsky was concerned, not for the better. In the new Soviet Russia dominated by Lenin, his positions were seen as “spiritual distortions” and were the object of harsh cultural and political opposition from those who, like Aleksandr Rodčenko, Ljubov’ Popova and Nikolaj Punin, supported constructivist and materialist positions. Seeing himself isolated, in 1921 Kandinsky wisely decided to return to Germany. In his painting, meanwhile, the geometrization, initially only hinted at, becomes predominant: it can be seen in the first works created on his return to Europe, such as the twelve tables of Kleine Welten (Small worlds), published in Berlin in 1922, which was followed by a masterful canvas such as Weißes Kreuz (White Cross), also on display, which Peggy Guggenheim will want in her collection. Another change was in the air but, for the sprout of a “new” Kandinskji to blossom, a fertile cultural ground and the right intellectual climate were needed: Kandinskji found both 300 kilometers southwest of Berlin, in an art and design school of Weimar. His name was Bauhaus.

From the figurative to the abstract: a compendium

In 1913, Kandinsky published an album of woodcuts called Klänge (Sounds), a sort of summary of the years in which he created his new world and, from the figurative, arrived at the abstract. It is a poetic and graphic presentation of the artist’s itinerary which however does not retrace the evolution of his style but rather focuses on his spiritual journey, whose sources are the “impressions”, the “improvisations” and the “compositions” . It is almost a synthesis work, in which images and text, engravings and poems meet, and popular narratives alternate with mythical stories, dreamlike revelations and experiences of everyday life. The entire album is presented as the story of a journey that tends towards its culmination, which is the “icon” of the Große Auferstehung (Great Resurrection), emblem of the victory of love over death.

Art documentaries

The flight over the new world created by Kandinsky ends by gifting viewers with an invaluable series of images: a video that director Hans Cürlis, a pioneer of art documentary, shot in 1926 and in which Kandinsky is filmed while he is painting in the premises of the Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf in Berlin. It was the period of teaching at the Bauhaus. Just that year his book Punto e linea sulla stelle came out. The straight and curved lines that we see flowing into the short film are typical of Kandinsky in the 1920s. It is very interesting to observe how the artist holds the brush and traces the signs: we almost seem to enter his creative process. This is followed by a four-minute film from December 1963, in which Nina Kandinskij, the painter’s widow, explains to an interviewer the reasons for the lawsuit she has brought against the book Der Blaue Reiter by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. Beyond the contingency of the case, some precious information emerges: the underlining of the absence of any political component in her husband’s art, his role in the “Blue Knight”, the period in Russia in the second half of the 1910s, a dry but effective personal remembrance. Thus, our flight has ended: it is time to return to planet Earth.