Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the first abstract painter, was born in Moscow. Originally a lawyer, he was influenced by ethnographic art to begin study as a painter in Munich in 1896. By 1904 he had opened his own art school, co-founding the New Artists' Federation in 1909 and later working with Klee, Marc, and Macke to establish the Blaue Reiter. After living in Sweden and Switzerland during the war, Kandinsky returned to Russia following the 1917 revolution, reorganizing or setting up no fewer than 227 museums. He returned to Germany in 1921 to become a professor at the Bauhaus in Weimar, then in Dessau and finally Berlin. The school was closed by the Nazis, and Kandinsky fled to Paris, where he died in 1944. We source Kandinsky prints from the USA and Europe.