Fröhlicher Aufstieg

Kandinsky's artistic journey, from Russian folklore to completely non-representational art is one of the most important and fascinating voyages of discovery undertaken in the 20th Century. His guiding principle was the search for the spiritual in art, and as time went on he became less and less interested in depicting physical reality, and more concerned with expressing inner meanings or impulses. He moved away from the external world, abandoning narrative or representational art, in order that this inner meaning sounded forth more clearly. The idea that shapes could have sounds, and that colours could have emotional meanings was rooted in his earliest years, when even as a child he reacted strongly to the sounds of words, to music and to colour. Quite naturally he reacted against any division between the branches of the arts, and keenly felt their close interrelationship. In works of the early 1920s, particularly after his move to the Bauhaus in 1923, we see a complete abandonment of the real world. Physical reality had for some time been reduced to symbols, leaving the viewer to guess at what they stood for. Now, however, we see a dramatic and revolutionary shift, to where the image is entirely self-sufficient. Meaning is no longer imported from the outside, but the shapes have a meaning entirely of their own. The simple, impersonal geometric forms have their own significance, and exist in relation to one another, but no longer stand for objects in the world around us. His goal, uniquely, was for his pictures, and the elements from which they were constructed, to strike the eye and mind directly, just as tones and rhythms in music are absorbed, without the question, what do they mean.