Tag Archives: vasily kandinsky

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Vasily Kandinksy, Around The Circle

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around the circle photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

Around The Circle (1940 ), one of Vasily Kandinksy’s last major paintings, is a milestone in the artist’s circular journey. It reflects not only contemporary concerns but also his abiding interest in the belief systems and folklore of Russian and Siberian cultures. The dominant red circle at top center; the form cresting the undulating lines of “sacred waters” below; and a third, upside-down stylized humanoid form at bottom right have all been interpreted as potential allusions to shamans, or spiritual leaders and healers, in states of transformation. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Vasily Kandinksy, Around The Circle →

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Penguin Donkey Bookcase By Egon Riss

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penguin donkey bookcase with breuer chaise photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

Founded in 1929, Isokon became one of the most progressive modern furnishings companies in the United Kingdom. Several former members of the Bauhaus were tapped as designers, including Marcel Breuer, whose chase lounge is on view above, and Egon Riss, who designed several zoomorphic pieces for the company, including this molded-ply bookcase (1939) that resembles a Donkey with its upturned ears.

Continue reading Eye On Design: Penguin Donkey Bookcase By Egon Riss →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Vasily Kandinsky, Picture With An Archer

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kandinsky picture with an anchor photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

The vibrant colors of Vasily Kandinsky’s Picture With An Archer (1909) almost obscure its subject. At lower right, an archer on horseback leaps through a radiant landscape of towering trees and rock formations. Men in Russian dress stand in the left foreground; behind them is a group of buildings with onion-shaped domes. This folkloric scene evokes Kandinsky’s native Russia, and it also bears the influence of Murnau, the southern German town where the artist lived when he made this work: the black outlines enclosing bright colors recall reverse glass painting, a local craft. “Color,” Kandinsky wrote a year later, “is a power which directly influences the soul.”

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Vasily Kandinsky, Dominant Curve

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Kandinsky Dominant Curve
Photo By Gail

After the Bauhaus closed under political pressure in 1933, Vasily Kandinsky was forced to abandon Germany for a second time, and he settled in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Sein. The artist increasingly experimented with materials and colors, favoring pastels and gold-hues reminiscent of Russian origin. Likewise, Surrealism and the natural sciences clearly inform Kandisky’s compositions from this period. In Dominant Curve (Courbe Dominante – 1936), a schematized pink embryo floats near the upper-right corner while the figures within the green rectangle in the upper left recall microscopic marine animals, These buoyant, biomorphic images suggest a hope for a postwar rebirth and regeneration, despite the worsening political environment.

Photographed in the Guggenheim Museum in NYC.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Norman Lewis, Phantasy II

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Phantasy II
Photo By Gail

Norman Lewis (1909 – 1979), began his art career as a figurative painter, focusing on life in Harlem. In 1946, he announced that he wanted to create art that broke away from what he called “its stagnation in too much tradition.” Inspired by the writings and art of the Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky, one of the first artists to create abstract paintings, Lewis abandoned representation in favor of the “conceptual expression” of ideas. Like other Abstract Expressionists working in New York, Lewis was deeply interested in music, and especially jazz, which influenced the painting of  Phantasy II (1946). In an automatic process, he made a linear composition with boldly colored lines and forms akin to the improvisational structure of jazz.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.