“Form itself, even if completely abstract,” Wassily Kandinsky once said, “has its own inner sound.” By this measure, the new exhibition at the H’ART Museum is set to be a symphony. In “Kandinsky,” the Amsterdam institution, in partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, has brought together 60 of the painter’s works to trace his creative journey, from evocative figuration to moving abstraction.
Among the highlights of the exhibition is “Mit dem Schwarzen Bogen,” the artist’s 1912 composition that epitomizes his reach for autonomous figuration rather than naturalistic representation. The painting is constructed of thick black strokes, joined by organic shapes and a dance of colors. Its movement and dissonance were deliberate and inspired by the musical work of Kandinsky’s friend Arnold Schönberg.
“The pictorial and musical dissonance of 'today',” he wrote to the composer in 1911, “is no more than the consonance of 'tomorrow'.”
It took decades for Kandinsky to arrive at his pioneering understanding of abstraction. Born in Moscow in 1866, he later moved to Munich, Germany, where, deeply inspired by Monet, he abandoned a career in law and economics for art at the age of 30.
Although his early landscapes, including “The Blue Rider” (1903), were post-impressionist in their leanings, he began to embrace expressive figuration after spending his first summer in Murnau. There, the city’s colors, light, and local folk art led Kandinsky to develop his artistic theories, contained in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (1911).
This turning point for Kandinsky is highlighted in the H'ART Museum exhibition with paintings such as “Improvisation 3” (1909) and “Impression V (Parc)” (1911), which confirm his experiments in hybrid forms. The period culminates with “Bild mit rotem Fleck” (1914), a landmark work in which the painter's dissonance gains dynamism.
Also central to the exhibition is Kandinsky’s association with the Bauhaus from 1922 onwards. While teaching at the Weimar school, he developed his study of points and lines, writing “Point and Line to Plane” (1926), a book that would prove highly influential. It was at this time that Kandinsky’s art turned towards geometry with a lightness no less cosmic, as seen in “On White II”, 1923.
Also from this period, “Kandinsky” will present the murals that the artist painted with his students for the Juryfreie Kunstschau (Free Jury Art Exhibition) of 1922. Although the original panels have been lost, this reconstruction, with the same colors, shapes and dimensions, was faithfully made under the guidance of Nina Kandinsky for the inauguration of the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1977.
The couple moved to Paris in Kandinsky’s final years, where he painted vital works such as “Entassement réglé” (1938) before his death in 1944. Nina would secure his legacy, donating a large trove of his works and the contents of his studio (including drawings, watercolors and graphic works) to the Pompidou. In 1979, she founded the Kandinsky Society, based at the museum, which oversaw the publication of his catalogue raisonné. The organization went bankrupt in 2015. “Kandinsky” marks the first exhibition at the H’ART Museum after severing ties with its parent institution, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The show was first shown at the Centre Pompidou in 2009.
“Kandinsky” is on display at the H'ART Museum, Amstel 51, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, until November 10.
Source: Artnet News