Wassily Kandinsky

When you hear the name, Leonardo da Vinci, you immediately visualize "The Last Super" or "Mona Lisa", or with Michelangelo Buonarroti, you may think about "David" and his work in the Sistine Chapel, in addition to Claude Monet's impressionism, and Wyland's seascapes that are displayed all over the world on the sides of buildings and walls. These are only a few out of many artists that have brought to life the beauty of landscapes, animals, people, and shapes. What strikes their interest? Where are they from? In addition, what makes their work so interesting to the ordinary eye? There are many stories that could be told, but this one is of a Russian artist, the first to create a fully abstract painting.

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian-born artist, whose contributions to the world of modern art are innumerable. On an artistic level, Kandinsky's maturation process from representational art to abstract art is fascinating. From his earliest work, with an impressionistic flair, to his later work, which was pure abstraction, Kandinsky was an innovator and a genius. He bridged the gap between reality painting of earlier decades and the fantasy escapism of the twentieth century.

Wassily Kandinsky (Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky) was born on December 4, 1866 in Moscow. His father was a successful tea merchant and his mother was a teacher. From early on in his life, Kandinsky acquired a love for travel moving to Florence in 1869 then back to Russia in 1871, this time to the smaller town of Odessa (a.k.a. "The Pearl of the Black Sea"). Shortly after returning to Russia,