Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian-born painter often credited as a pioneer of pure abstract art. Born in Moscow in 1866, he trained in law and economics before turning to painting in his thirties. He came to believe that color and shape could speak directly to the soul, much as music does, without needing to picture any real object, and he pushed his work toward total abstraction in the years before the First World War.

He wrote influential books on the spiritual side of art and taught at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany, shaping generations of designers and artists. His canvases pulse with floating shapes, bold color, and a sense of rhythm he often compared to sound. Forced to move as politics turned against modern art, he spent his final years in France, still exploring his lifelong idea that painting could be a kind of visual music.