The Guggenheim Museum presents Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 in the museum’s Kandinsky Gallery on Annex Level 3. The exhibition features an intimate presentation of sixteen early paintings and woodcuts by Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), highlighting pictorial themes that preceded the artist’s known nonobjective style.
This exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance.
Kandinsky launched his artistic career in 1895, abandoning a legal profession to become the art director of a printing firm in Moscow. One year later Kandinsky left for Munich, where he formed associations with the city’s leading avant-garde groups, realized his talent for working with three classic printmaking techniques (etching, lithography, and woodcut), and began to evolve as an artist and theoretician.
