Kandinsky

Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the founders of abstract painting, perhaps the most revolutionary development in 20th-century art. In this book, 40 of his major works are reproduced in full-page colorplates, each with an accompanying commentary.

Author Thomas M. Messer has selected important paintings from every period of Kandinsky's long and varied career. The early Riding Couple is followed by such masterpieces as the apocalyptic Composition VI and Composition VII, which date from the years before World War I that witnessed Kandinsky's radical breakthrough into a richly colored abstraction. Other colorplates include the complete set of four decorative panels executed in 1914 for the American collector Edwin R. Campbell and Several Circles, perhaps the finest geometric work from Kandinsky's years at the Bauhaus school in Germany. The artist's final decade, spent in Paris, is represented by such works as the valedictory Tempered Elan.

The introduction includes discussion of Kandinsky's highly original contributions to aesthetic theory, developed in the famous Blue Rider Almanac and his influential treatises On the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line to Plane. Photographs of the artist, his family, and his associates are also featured.m