Wassily Kandinsky: “A form without content is not a hand but an empty glove, full of air.”

Wassily Kandinsky

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“A form without content is not a hand but an empty glove, full of air.”
Wassily Kandinsky

 

Pure abstraction started with Kandinsky and also with Robert Delaunay and Franz Marc. They are considered as the “mentors,” but they were not the only ones and abstract works previous to them have been discovered.

Pure abstraction can be simply defined as “the painting that does not show recognizable objects.”

The images that show Kandinsky’s world view are abstract, but that abstraction is not a goal in itself. His language is not a dead one that does not communicate beyond the aesthetical composition. On the contrary: Kandinsky’s language transmits life, the chaos of the universe giving birth to something new and beautiful.

Wassily Kandinsky was very careful when theorizing or defending a style that will impose forever, a new understanding of painting. Although he proposed leaving aside imagination, warned at the same time that separating form and color from content was dangerous.

That is why he clarifies: “pure color and free form, without content, would result in ornamental works resembling something like a tie or rug.”

 

Image: Composition 10 (1939).

 

Recommended links:

Timeline: Moments of Kandinsky.

Kandinsky and the Return to Russia.

Kandinsky and the Biomorphic Abstraction.

The Bauhaus.

Kandinsky at the Bauhaus.

The Suprematist Compositions of Malévich.

When does Modern Art Start?

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