Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter who was a contemporary of Hilma Af Kline and is considered one of the early prioneers abstraction in western art. He was fascinated by Christian eschatology (study of the end-time or ‘apocolypse’) and was a devout Orthodox Christian. Kandinsky used abstraction as he believed that it offered the highest opportunity for profound, transcendental expression and to copy from nature was to ‘interfere’ with the process. He worked to communicate a sense of spirituality using a visual style that eschewed the outside world to express the inner life of the artist.

Composition VII - Wassily Kandinsky

Oil on Canvas (200.0 × 300.0 cm)

He wrote extensively on Spirituality in Art seeing the artist as prophet synthesising the inner and spiritual worlds to tell of something greater (and potentially foretelling of world events - WWII).