Abstraction: Wassily Kandinsky


Upside-Down Wassily Kandinsky


There is a famous story that Kandinsky saw an upside-down painting (one of his own representational works) and had a strong response to it before he realized what the subject matter was. This was an important discovery; a painting could have meaning through its colors, shapes, design, and surface, even without clear subject matter. This discovery influenced Kandinsky, in the early 20th century, to create some of the first completely "non-objective" abstract paintings.






In this Kandinsky from the early  20th century there is a slight hint of landscape and figures but the painting verges on being "non-objective". 



                                                

Here Kandinsky has progressed completely into "non-objective" abstraction.







In this Kandinsky we may still see a hint of recognizable subject matter