Vasilij Kandinskij

Music and its idea appear everywhere in Kandinskij’s paintings so much that his generic titles are “Compositions”, “Improvisations”, “Impression” etc. He could therefore "see music" as he followed a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin: he was capable of synesthesia, that is an involuntary neurological phenomenon by which a person perceives several senses as being associated. In particular, listening to Wagner's Lohengrin he could see the colors of his beloved city Mosca.
He is convinced that music can teach to the artist how to represent his psychological life: music doesn’t want to imitate nature, like art did, but it’s an art form that has its goal in the expression of an inner world.
Kandinskij claims that art has to be increasingly similar to music, the colors must assimilate in sound because that is the only way to abandon mimesis : only an abstract painting can lead to spirituality. Beauty is reached without any connection to the existent objects, only with colors and shapes.
That’s why Kandinskij is considered the father of Abstract art characterized by Anti Naturalism.

His first abstract watercolor painting was completed in 1910.
It is formed by coloured patches that float in space in a liberated way, and some marks made with pencil and pen. We can notice that the dominant colors are grey-blue and yellow-orange: they represent a musical theme that varies with the changing shades.

This artwork is named "Composition VIII", it was painted in 1923 and it is essential to understand Kandinskij's style.
In this painting the artist moves the attention from colors to shapes as the dominant element of the composition: as we can see it is made by a series of geometrical shapes and each one of them has a spiritual meaning. Triangular lines represent pressure, the horizontal ones represent calm, the circles represent movement, and so on.
Kandinskij's goal is to reach the complete detachment from natural shapes or existing objects.