Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter whose exploration of the possibilities of abstraction make him one of the most important innovators in modern art. Both as an artist and as a theorist he played a pivotal role in the development of abstract art.

Born in Moscow, December 4, 1866, Kandinsky studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, from 1896 to 1900. His early paintings were executed in a naturalistic style, but in 1909, after a trip to Paris during which he was highly impressed by the works of the Fauves and postimpressionists, his paintings became more highly colored and loosely organized. Around 1913 he began working on paintings that came to be considered the first totally abstract works in modern art; they made no reference to objects of the physical world and derived their inspiration and titles from music.

He was one of the most influential artists of his generation. As one of the first explorers of the principles of nonrepresentational or “pure” abstraction, Kandinsky can be considered an artist who paved the way for abstract expressionism, the dominant school of painting since World War II . Kandinsky died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, on December 13, 1944.

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