Page 203 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter IV
In 1901, together with Rolf Niczky, Waldemar Hecker, Gustav Freytag and Wilhelm Hüsgen, Kandinsky established the Phalanx artists’ exhibiting society, as well as The Phalanx School of Painting – of which he was elected director.5 Due to a lack of students The Phalanx School of Painting was closed after a year, but by then Kandinsky had al- ready met his new partner, Gabriele Münter, who was to accompany him in his various travels in the following years.6
Kandinsky’s works created between 1900 and 1908 do not represent a unified style. Nevertheless, a gradual transfiguration of his creativity was by then silently taking place. Russian folksong and legend inspired a significant number of these early paintings. A dreamlike world dissolved in intense colour is observed in compositions such as Motley Life (image 1) and Russian Beauty in a Landscape (image 2). In this early period Kandinsky also mastered the woodcut medium and produced a number of woodcuts (images 3 and 4) through which he explored a parallel with lyric poetry as well as began a process of the “musicalisation” of painting. More particularly, he believed that painting could ac- quire the abstract qualities equivalent to those that exist in music. It was this rather mystical vision that gradually led him towards the realisation of that which can be termed as a superlative composition. The theme of The Blue Rider (image 5) emerges in this early period and follows Kandinsky all the way into his purely abstract phase.
In 1908, Kandinsky’s partner Gabriele Münter purchased a house in the small town of Murnau. For a few years, Murnau was a place of creativity where Kandinsky and Münter gathered other artists, such as Alexei von Jawlensky and Marianne Werefkin.7 The Mur- nau years constitute a significant period in Kandinsky’s artistic development. He wrote poetry, devised abstract stage-productions and inquired studiously into the idea of the synthesis of all art disciplines. As noted by Becks-Malorny, the paintings of this period manifest influences from Cézanne.8
In spite of living in an era of tumultuous cultural and political changes, it was difficult to deceive Kandinsky when it came to matters relating to innovation in art. For example, as stated by John Golding, Kandinsky recognised that Constructivism was in certain respects associated to the positivist and materialistic tendencies. It was these tendencies that he, together with Mondrian and Malevich, had been in revolt against.9 Kandinsky
5 Ibid., 192.
6 Shortly before meeting Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky had separated from his first wife Anya and given up the apartment which they had shared in Munich (they officially divorced in 1911). Later, in 1917, Kandinsky married a daugh- ter of a general, Nina Andreevsky.
7 Ibid., 23.
8 Ibid., 24.
9 John Golding, Paths to the Absolute: Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Pollock, Newman, Rothko and Still (Thames &
Hudson, 2000), 107.
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