How to Read Paintings: Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons) by Wassily Kandinsky
A step on the path to abstract art and a brighter epoch
There is a story about Wassily Kandinsky, that one night in his studio in Munich, he happened to notice something strange about one of his works.
The painting was both recognisable and yet oddly changed, having been turned on its side. Kandinsky said that at that moment he saw a painting “of extraordinary beauty, glowing with an inner radiance.” The unexpected arrangement of colours impressed him and went on to provide a new inspiration for his own trajectory as a painter. Kandinsky — later referred to as the “Lord of Abstraction” — made good use of this happy accident.
What I think we can learn about Kandinsky from this story was that he was open to seeing his own art with new possiblities. Up until this point in history, no artist had deliberately presented a pure abstract painting. The difference with Kandinsky was that he saw in the arrangement of colours and shapes on a canvas a subject matter in itself.
Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866 and spent his childhood in Moscow. It took him some time to find his bearings as a visual artist. Until the age of 30, he’d worked as a successful Moscow lawyer. A key moment in his artistic formation occurred…
