Wassily Kandinsky (b. 1866 Moskow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine)
Untitled c. 1925-1935 50 x 30 cm
Lithograph no. III 1925 Litographs 27 x 19 cm
Untitled c. 1925-1935 47 x 36 cm
Lithograph no. I 1925 32 x 24 cm printed by Staatliches Bauhaus, Weimar
Réciproque 1935 Serigraphy 50 x 65 cm printed by Ed. Hazan, Paris
Collection of Galeri Nasional IndonesiaAt the start of the 20th century, after giving up his legal career, Wassily worked as the artistic director of a print studio in Moscow. He worked with etchings, engraving, dry point and lithography. Upon coming to the Bauhaus to teach, he started to explore a new stage in his artistic process which we now know as Small Worlds (Kleine Welten). The next stage in his exploration was that of point and line to plane. The works from these series indicated the depth of his curiosity, his willingness to experiment and to explore the medium. Wassily's time at the Bauhaus is also known as the starting point of his movement towards exploring spirituality through his works. According to him, the task of the artist is to find principles which can be applied as expressions to “move the human soul”. These principles can only be found in the spiritual foundations of the artist.
Similarly with his paintings, Wassily's printed works don't refer to nature or the world as we know them. In his works on paper, geometric forms of various shapes and sizes, appear frozen-like in an explosion. This assemblage of forms-without-meaning appear differently from their original form. But they are also not in their final form. Thus, according to Wassily, it is the responsibility of the viewer to look for the beauty within him or herself so that he or she can be moved.This inner beauty is not connected to natural beauty, with the 'impressions' of the impressionists, the emotions of the expressionists or the experiments of the cubists. Beauty, in this case, is present when the viewer can see it in pure forms and colour.
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