Vassily Kandinsky citations (80 citations)

V. The psychological working of Colour: Quoted in: Hajo Düchting (2000) Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: A Revolution in Painting. p. 17
Alternative translation:
Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hands which plays touching one key or another purposively to cause vibrations in the Soul; in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, 1990
Source: 1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Source: Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The disharmoniousness (one might say, the negative rhythm) of the individual forms was that which primarily drew me, attracted me, during the period to which this watercolor belongs. The so-called rhythmic always comes on its own because in general the person himself is rhythmically built. Thus at least on the surface, the rhythmic is innate in people. Children, 'primitive' peoples, and laymen draw rhythmically..
In that period my soul was especially enchanted by the not-fitting-together of drawn and painterly form. Line serves the plane in that the former bounds the latter. And it makes my heart race in those cases when the independent plane springs over the confining line: line and plane are not in tune! It was this that produced a strong inner emotion in me, the inner 'ah!”

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Wassily Kandinsky

2 quotes from Kandinsky's letter to Hans Arp, November 1912; in Friedel, Wassily Kandinsky, p. 489; as cited in Negative Rhythm: Intersections Between Arp, Kandinsky, Münter, and Taeuber, Bibiana K. Obler (including transl. - Yale University Press, 2014
Kandinsky was trying to explain to Arp his state of mind when he made his sketch for 'Improvisation with Horses' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Wassily_Kandinsky_Cossacks_or_Cosaques_1910%E2%80%931.jpg, 1911, a watercolor belonging to Arp. Kandinsky had told Arp that he could have one of his pictures included in the 'Moderne Bund' (second) exhibition in Zurich, 1912, and this was the one Arp selected
1910 - 1915

“Paris [1933 - 1944] with its wonderful (intense soft) light had relaxed my palette — there were other colors, other entirely new forms, and some that I had used years earlier. Naturally I did all this unconsciously.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote from his letter to Alfred Barr, Jr., 16 July, 1944; as cited in Vivian Endicott Barnett, et al., 'Kandinsky', exh. cat. [New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009], p. 70
1930 - 1944

“Alors sempre avanti! (Ever Forward / Always Ahead)”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote from his letter from Paris to Paul Klee in Switzerland, 12 December 1939; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1930 - 1944

“My wish [c. 1911].... of compiling a book (a kind of Almanac) in which all the contributions should be written by artists. I dreamt primarily of painters and musicians. The ruinous separation of the arts from each other, and of 'Art' from folk-art and from children's art, the distinction between 'Art' and 'Ethnography' [folk-art].... the solid walls erected between phenomena that in my eyes were so closely related, even identical: in a word, the potentialities for synthesis left me no peace. It may well seem strange today [1930] that for a long time I could not find any co-workers or any means to promote this idea..”

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Wassily Kandinsky

as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 102
1920 - 1930

“The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

III. The Movement of the Triangle
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“First I will make different color tests: I will study the dark – deep blue, deep violet, deep dirty green, etc. Often I see the colors before my eyes. Sometimes I imitate with my lips the deep sounds of the trumpet – then I see various deep mixtures which the word is uncapable od conceiving and which the palette can only feebly reproduce.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, 1915; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 16 note 54
1910 - 1915

“An artist who sees that the imitation of natural appearances, however artistic, is not for him – the kind of creative artist who wants to, and has to express his own inner world – sees with envy how naturally and easily such goals can be attained in music, the least material of the arts today. Understandably, he may turn toward it and try to find the same means in his own art. Hence the current search for rhythm in painting, for mathematical abstract construction.... the way colors are set in motion, etc.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

1910 - 1915
Source: On the Spiritual in Art, 1911; as quoted in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 15

“Each spiritual age expresses its special character in a form which corresponds exactly to its character. Each age in this way characterizes its true 'physiognomy', full of expression and strength. Thus in all spiritual areas 'yesterday' is transformed into 'today'. But apart from this, art possesses a further quality which it alone possesses: that quality which enables one to divine the 'tomorrow' today – a strength which is both creative and prophetic.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky's last theoretical statement (Paris, 1942); in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 38
1930 - 1944

“I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote from his letter to Freundlich, 15 July 15, 1938; as cited in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 27
1930 - 1944

“You mention the circle and I agree with your definition.... why does the circle fascinates me? It is (1) the most modern form, but asserts itself unconditionally, (2) a precise but inexhaustible variable, (3) simultaneously stable and unstable, (4) simultaneously loud and soft, (5) a single tension that caries countless tensions within it. The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form, and in balance. Of the three primary forms (triangle, square, circle), it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote from Kandinsky's letter to Will Grohmann, c. 1926; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 36
1920 - 1930

“The more freely abstract the form becomes, the purer, and also the more primitive it sounds. Therefore, in a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completely abstracted... Here we are confronted by the question: Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract? This is a question that naturally arises, the answer to which is at once indicated by an analysis of the concordance of the two elements of form (the objective and the abstract). Just as every word spoken (tree, sky, man) awakens an inner vibration, so too does every pictorially represented object. To deprive oneself of the possibility of this calling up vibrations would be to narrow one's arsenal of expressive means. At least, that is how it is today. But apart from today's answer, the above question receives the eternal answer to every question in art that begins with 'must.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

There is no 'must' in art, which is forever free.
Quote from: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, 2 Vols. (transl. Peter Vergo); Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., (1982), p. 195; as cited in: Samet, Jennifer Sachs. Painterly Representation in New York, 1945-1975. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010. p. 25
1910 - 1915

“Well, we will indeed see how things develop and what will become of our art! In any case, artists should remain apolitical and only think of their work and dedicate all their energies to this work.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

to Werner Drewes, 10 April 1933; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
both were closely connected with the Bauhaus, closed by the Nazi-regime in 1933
1930 - 1944

“The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static to the dynamic occurs. […] The forces coming from without which transform the point into a line, can be very diverse. The variation in lines depends upon the number of these forces and upon their combinations.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

1920 - 1930, Point and line to plane, 1926

“There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

I. Kandinsky's introduction
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“Nor, on the other hand, are there any masculine charms [in Gabriele Münter's work] either: no 'sinewy brushwork', no heaps of paint, 'hurled on to the canvas'. The pictures are painted throughout with a delicately and correctly sensed measure of external strength, with not a trace of feminine or masculine coquetry in the 'making'. We could almost say that they are painted modestly; i. e. that they were inspired, not by a desire for outward display, but by a purely inward compulsion.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote of Kandinsky, 1913; in the introduction of an exhibition-catalog 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', Munich; as cited by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 120
1910 - 1915

“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

VIII. Art and Artists
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“.. the long Russian word for creation: 'proisvedenie' - so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German - expresses for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

footnote, p. 15
1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918

“At the moment there is a great tendency in painting to discover the 'new' harmony by constructive means whereby the rhythmic is built on an almost geometric form... I am certain that our own modern harmony is not to be found in the 'geometric' way, but rather in the anti-geometric, anti-logical way. And this way is that of 'dissonance in art', in painting, therefore, just as much as in music. And 'today's' dissonance in painting and music is merely the consonance of 'tomorrow.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Arnold Schönberg, 18 Jan. 1911; as cited in Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 9
1910 - 1915

“All means are sacred when they are dictated by inner necessity. All means are reprehensible when they do not spring from the fountain of inner necessity… The artist must be blind to 'recognized' and 'unrecognized' form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Quoted in: Sunil Goonasekera (1991) George Keyt, Interpretations. p. 146
Talking about the means in painting
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal. In any composition the material side may be more or less omitted in proportion as the forms used are more or less material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted forms, the deeper and more confidently will he advance into the kingdom of the abstract. And after him will follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will have gradually acquired a greater familiarity with the language of that kingdom.
Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this question. As every word spoken rouses an inner vibration, so likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of this possibility is to limit one's powers of expression. That is at any rate the case at present. But besides this answer to the question, there is another, and one which art can always employ to any question beginning with "must": There is no "must" in art, because art is free.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

VI. The language of Form and Colour
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

“We do not want to leave Germany forever. Something I would not be able to manage at all, since my roots sit too deep in German soil.”

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Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky to Will Grohmann, 4 Dec. 1933; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1930 - 1944