Essay by Magdalena Dabrowski. Foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg.

Pioneering work by the great modernist painter, considered by many to be the father of abstract art and a leader in the movement to free art from traditional bonds. 12 illustrations.

This famous work by a pioneer in the movement to free art from the bonds of tradition explores the role of the line, point, and other key elements of non-objective painting. 127 illustrations.

Now in an updated English edition with full color illustrations, Kandinsky's fascinating and witty artist's book represents a crucial moment in the painter's move toward abstraction.

"The importance of Kandinsky's art and thought in the history of modern art combined with the completeness, careful scholarship, and crisp design of this volume make it especially useful."--Choice Of all the giants of twentieth-century art, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was the most prolific writer. Here, available for the first time in paperback, are all of Kandinsky's writings on art, newly translated into English. Editors Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo have taken their translations directly from Kandinsky's original texts, and have included select interviews, lecture notes, and newly discovered items along with his more formal writings. The pieces range from one-page essays to the book-length treatises On the Spiritual in Art (1911) and Point and Line to Plane (1926), and are arranged in chronological order from 1901 to 1943. The poetry, good enough to stand on its literary merits, is presented with all the original accompanying illustrations. And the book's design follows Kandinsky's intentions, preserving the spirit of the original typography and layout. Kandinsky was nearly thirty before he bravely gave up an academic career in law for his true passion, painting. Though his art was marked by extraordinarily varied styles, Kandinsky sought a pure art throughout, one which would express the soul, or "inner necessity," of the artist. His uncompromising search for an art which would elicit a response to itself rather than to the object depicted resulted in the birth of nonobjective art-and in these writings, Kandinsky offered the first cogent explanation of his aims. His language was characterized by its desire for vivification, of the infusion of life into mundane things. Considered as a whole, Kandinsky's writings exceed all expectations of what an artist should accomplish with words. Not only do his ideas and observations make us rethink the nature of art and the way it reflects the aspirations of his era, but they touch on matters vital to the situation of the human soul.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schönberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art, Dada and Futurism, had just manifested themselves. Independently of those sometimes spectacular activities, both Schönberg and Kandinsky had already concluded that the material and the compositional methods they had relied on in the past were exhausted and did not satisfy the development of their artistic ideas. Both artists had already submitted their modes of production to a critical analysis which resulted in Schonberg's Theory of Harmony and Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art , both of 1911 - indeed the two artists had already been putting their self-criticism into practice for some time. In Schönberg's case this led to breaking with tonality; Kandinsky effected the transition to abstract painting. This book is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schönberg and Kandin