Articles

Abstract

Kandinsky remained a lifelong thinker whose thinking was based on an exploratory practice in the field of art. His intellectual training prepared him for a university professorship, which he was offered in 1896, at the age of thirty. He turned it down, however, to devote himself to artistic creation, but he remained a scholar and teacher throughout his life, notably at the University of Moscow, publishing many texts that attest to the rigor of his thought. A poet since childhood, Kandinsky also wrote stage compositions, using a very rich language, both in Russian and in German, without shrinking from the unexpected use of the existing vocabulary, or from the invention of new words. In the theoretical field, he proposed a set of rules, principles, a vocabulary and a grammar for the art: a theory of color, a theory of form and a theory of composition. This theoretical reflection is based on his experience of the language of the pure means of art and of principles of composition. Kandinsky approached art in its striving towards truth: for him, there is an artistic way of knowledge [artistic way of gaining knowledge], which leads to an individual and collective betterment. But his theory is above all related to an artistic practice that comes first, from which it emerges. Kandinsky’s thinking also concerns the theology of art: artistic creation involves the artist in the creative gesture of the Lord and calls him to contribute to the harmony of the world.