Wassily Kandinskys Composition Series

Wassily Kandinsky could have been the premier abstract artist of the 20th century is a world at war had no twice interfered with his artistic career and destroyed three of his early works . Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866 and soon moved to Germany where he worked with the Bauhaus School of expressionist painters integrating art in architecture and design ( Artcyclopedia . He also founded the Der Blaue Reiter , a group of artists attempting to express and define spirituality through art ( Artcyclopedia ) Kandinsky believed that music and art should be integrated as

a well as a means of defining the influence of the soul on the outer world . To that end , he began his series called Composition and had completed 7 of them before the beginning of World War II Tragically , the first three canvases in the series were destroyed during the war . While Kandinsky could not have planned for the destruction of his work , the loss of the first three Composition pieces helps complete the series as an allegory for his life , the ultimate tribute to a man who believe art should be spiritual

At the only time in recent history when the entire collection , with full-size black and white photos of the lost three holding their place was displayed , reviewer Mark harden called Kandinsky one of he most original and influential artists of the 20th century . His "inner necessity " to express his emotional perceptions led to the development of an abstract style of painting that was based on the non-representational properties of color and form . Kandinsky 's compositions were the culmination of his efforts to create a "pure painting " that would provide the same emotional power as a musical composition . The exhibition "Kandinsky : Compositions , organized by Magdalena Dabrowski and on display at the Los Angeles County Art Museum until September 3 , 1995 , presents these monumental works together for the first and possibly last time and provides an opportunity to witness the creative process of Kandinsky (Harden , 1995 . The loss of the first three works and the attempt at representing them in the show left the viewer with a great sense of loss , Harden wrote , but perhaps more interesting is the fact they were lost at sometime near the artist 's death in 1944 . That they were destroyed in Germany during the war as some much of his life had been as well simply adds an ironic twist to the entire project

The other twist on the Composition series is that the final painting is the only one of the series done on a black background . In 1911 , when he was working on Composition IV and V , Kandinsky is quoted as saying (Black ) is like the silence of the body after death , the close of life (Harden , 1995 ) He painted Composition X on a black background just five years before his death , when Germany was once again disrupting the world and taking the world back to war

By 1911 , Kandinsky was already a world-renowned painter and known for...