Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Vasily Kandinsky is recognized as a major artistic innovator and painting theorist. In the opening decades of the 20th century, he was among those who advanced nonrepresentational modes of art-making to lasting effect. The artist’s stylistic evolution in this regard was intimately tied to his sense of place and the communities with which he engaged. Kandinsky gained insight from meaningful... Show more

Vasily Kandinsky is recognized as a major artistic innovator and painting theorist. In the opening decades of the 20th century, he was among those who advanced nonrepresentational modes of art-making to lasting effect. The artist’s stylistic evolution in this regard was intimately tied to his sense of place and the communities with which he engaged. Kandinsky gained insight from meaningful intersections with artists, musicians, poets, and other cultural producers, especially those who shared his transnational vision and experimental bent. Uprooted time and again, he adapted with his every relocation across Germany, back to Russia, and eventually to France—all against the backdrop of the sociopolitical upheavals occurring around him.

In this exhibition, Kandinsky’s work unfolds in reverse chronological order, starting with his late-life paintings and proceeding upward along the Guggenheim’s spiral ramp. His was not a fixed path from representation to abstraction, but rather a circular passage traversing persistent themes centered around the pursuit of one dominant ideal: the impulse for spiritual expression. This, what Kandinsky called the artist’s “inner necessity,” remained the guiding principle through the periodic redefinitions of his life and work.