One of the great innovators of European abstraction, Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944) broke new ground in painting during the first decades of the 20th century. In his influential treatise, On the spiritual in art, published in 1911, he wrote about art’s potential to ‘stand alone’, with imagery independent of the natural world. The development of a new subject matter based solely on the artist’s ‘inner necessity’ would occupy him for the rest of his life.
This comprehensive exhibition, curated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, draws from the Guggenheim’s rich holdings to reveal Kandinsky’s work in depth – from his beginnings in Munich, to his return to his birthplace of Moscow with the outbreak of World War One, followed by the interwar years in Germany where he was an instructor at the Bauhaus, and his final chapter in Paris.
A specially commissioned artist project – Point and Line to Plane by Desmond Lazaro – within the exhibition space draws inspiration from the ideas that influenced Kandinsky, to form an immersive and wondrous experience for all ages.
In conjunction with Kandinsky, a free exhibition of ‘spirit drawings’ created in the 1860s and 70s by British medium Georgiana Houghton helps to reveal the significant role spiritualism played in early modernism, while on the ground level This Living Being That Is Colour presents a small selection of works from the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection by contemporary artists who share Kandinsky’s belief in the power of colour and of abstraction.
