Wassily Kandinsky

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Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 4th, 1866 in Moscow, but spent most of his childhood in Odesa (now known as Ukraine). Two major events in 1896 had changed Kandinsky's career. Firstly, Kandinsky saw an exhibition of French Impressionists in Moscow, especially Claude Monet's Haystacks at Giverny. The second event was when he heard a romantic opera, Wagner's Lohengrin, at the Bolshoi Theatre. All of this influenced Kandinsky to abandon his law career and finally turn his attention to the study of art at the age of 30. 

He then moved to a city in Germany, Munich, where he was accepted into the Munich Academy of Arts, a private art school.  Kandinsky started with ordinary themes within his artworks. World War I forced Kandinsky out of Germany and back to Russia. He was heavily influenced by the constructivist movement, which was based on hard lines, dots, and geometry. However, Kandinsky was forced to leave his home and move to France in 1933 for his safety, where he remained for the rest of his life. As he remained in Paris, Kandinsky experimented more with his style by using organic shapes rather than sharp geometric shapes. He had been forming theories due to the influence of music and color. Kandinsky theorized that color directly affected the emotions of the viewer. These theories were also influenced by his synesthesia. It is a condition in which a person's perception overlaps multiple senses all at once. For example, colors have specific sounds or emotions correlated to them. Kandinsky often showed off, taught art classes, and introduced his ideas on theories of art.  His theories on color and music influenced  French artists such as George Braque and Robert Delaunay. Both artists used bold colors and geometric shapes in most of their art. All this led to him being seen as the father of abstract art.

Kandinsky created an impact on the artistic community in Paris during his time there. His work was closely associated with developing the abstract style in French art. He was also a key figure of the avant-garde group known as Section d'Or. His ideas about the autonomy of color and the use of abstract forms as a means of expression were embraced by many associated with the movement.

Kandinsky was able to influence, Section d'Or, which was an important group of French artists active in Paris that initially started in the early 1910s. The group's name translates to "the Golden Section" in English, and it took its name from the golden ratio, which was considered a mathematical principle of natural harmony and beauty. Members were influenced by artworks that had a more open and abstract style. They were also interested in the development of cubism, which was being pushed forward by artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Some well-known artists who were a part of the group such as Albert Gleizes and André Lhote. In-depth discussions were held by the group, like what was qualified as Cubism and what didn’t. Cubist artworks had subjects analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form, instead of depicting objects from a single perspective. 

These meetings and discussions allowed them to hold the first-ever major Cubist exhibition, La Section d'Or. The impact of Kandinsky's artwork and ideas helped the Section d'Or to establish a cultural hub for avant-garde art in Paris. The city had long been a center for the arts in Europe, and the Section d'Or's presence helped to further solidify its position as a breeding ground for innovation in the arts. The group's work was also instrumental in the broader shift away from traditional representational art towards more abstract and non-representational styles, and their legacy continues to have an important impact on the art world to this day.

His artistic ideas and contributions heavily influenced the artists associated with the Section d'Or movement and the development of abstract art during that time. He continued to create artwork, even as his art and style fell out of favor with the Parisians. Kandinsky eventually died of cerebrovascular disease on December 13, 1944.