Wassily Kandinsky is a key figure in 20th-century art, and his theories on colors and shapes continue to inspire artists today.
Wassily Vasilyevich Kandinsky was born on December 16, 1866. When he was 20, Kandinsky began studying Law and Economics at the university in his hometown. In 1896, the University of Tartu offered him a teaching position, but he declined it to devote himself entirely to art.
At the beginning of his career as a painter, his works were usually figurative impressionist landscapes, influenced, among others, by Monet. The influence of Fauvism is also evident in his use of bright and vivid colors.
However, in 1908, something happened that would change his painting forever.
One afternoon, Kandinsky went to his studio in Munich, and in the dim light he noticed a painting of extreme beauty. After a few seconds, the artist realized that it was one of his own paintings placed upside down, which is why he could not discern the subject.
This was a revelatory moment for Kandinsky, because he understood that the power of a work lay more in the relationship of the elements composing it than in the object it represented. Gradually, he began breaking away from representational art. Figures became increasingly less detailed, and color dominated over drawing until only lines, color spots, and visual rhythms remained, showing nothing recognizable.
Kandinsky believed that a work should have its own life due to the interplay of its lines, colors, elements, and strokes. According to him, this was the kind of painting that moves the human soul. For this, a work of art must be built from the artist’s inner necessity, which would make the viewer’s soul resonate. He expressed this in On the Spiritual in Art, a theoretical work published in 1911:
"In general, color is a means of exerting a direct influence on the soul: color is the key, the eye is the hammer, the soul is a piano with many strings, and the artist is the hand that, by pressing one key or another, causes the human soul to vibrate appropriately. The harmony of colors must be based solely on the principle of proper contact with the human soul. We shall call this foundation the principle of inner necessity."
This metaphor emphasizes Kandinsky’s relationship with music from his childhood and how he perceived art as a symphony. He believed that in every artwork, color and form vibrate in the viewer to provoke deep reactions. He often blurred the boundaries between visual arts and music and described what he thought each color would sound like.
Red was a strong and powerful sound; orange was deep and radiant; yellow was sharp and unsettling; green represented calm and profound tones; blue was a pure color reflecting spirituality; white was a pause before beginning; and black, muted and sad, was the final silence.
He also associated shapes with colors. Triangles corresponded to warm tones due to the sharpness of their angles, while deeper objects, such as rounded figures, corresponded to cooler colors.
Kandinsky believed that painting, like music, do not need to represent objects and that color, like sound, could evoke emotion.