Kandinsky in Munich

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) spent the better part of the first eighteen years of his artistic career-–from 1896 until 1914-–based in Munich. Leaving behind his home in Moscow and a promising career in law and economics, he and his first wife Anja Semjakina (life dates unknown) moved to the Bavarian capital so that he could pursue his artistic ambitions. During this time, Munich and the surrounding countryside played a particularly central role in his early experimentations with abstraction. The period was defined by his artistic training and collaborations in multiple artist groups––most notably Der Blaue Reiter. Many of the motifs and patterns he created between 1896 and 1914 would, for example, reappear in his abstractions from the 1910s and later works at the Bauhaus (with which he was involved between 1922–1933).

After moving to Munich at the end of 1896, Kandinsky trained under Slovene artist Anton Ažbe (1862–1905) between 1897 and 1899, a significant though often-overlooked stage in the artist’s career. Ažbe’s school was one of the most progressive in Munich, and it became especially popular among Eastern European artists who moved to the city. His classes were available to artists in all stages of their careers, whether they were just beginning their training or were already well-established, and his encouragement to experiment with new trends in art made his teaching methods particularly attractive to his students. During this short period, for example, Kandinsky was exposed to the practice of anatomical drawings in conjunction with new theories developed by Ažbe that encouraged imaginative approaches to form constructions. These included, for example, the Kugelprinzip and Linienspiel, both of which incorporated nascent theories on visual perception and colour.
Particularly important to the success of Kandinsky’s early training was his integration into the bohemian district of Schwabing in Munich, where Ažbe hosted his classes on Georgenstraße. Kandinsky and Semjakina lived in multiple residences in this lively artistic neighbourhood in their first years in the city, from Georgenstraße 62 and later 35 to Giselastraße 28, to finally settling on a studio at Friedrichstraße 1. Kandinsky’s new friends and colleagues Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) and Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) also lived nearby at Giselastraße 23––the latter of whom Kandinsky met through Ažbe’s school––where social gatherings took place and where artists, musicians, and philosophers exchanged new ideas.
After beginning his training with Ažbe, Kandinsky was accepted into the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in 1900, where he studied with the renowned draughtsman and Jugendstil follower Franz von Stuck (1863–1928). Kandinsky worked with Stuck for one year before helping to establish the Phalanx-Schule at Hohenzollernstraße 6 where he taught drawing and painting classes to men and women. The poster for the first Phalanx exhibition––held at Finkenstraße 2 in 1901––already shows the influence of the dominant Jugendstil to which he was exposed through Stuck (see also Das Fotoatelier Elvira).
Kandinsky met his long-term partner Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) in the summer of 1902 through the courses he taught with the Phalanx-Schule. Despite being married, Kandinsky and Münter began a romantic relationship, and the pair conducted a series of travels outside of Munich from 1904. After about four years of travelling to such locations as Holland, Tunisia, Italy, France, and South Tyrol, Münter and Kandinsky returned to Munich in 1908. In September, Kandinsky rented an apartment in Schwabing at Ainmillerstraße 36, where Münter later joined him. Between this home and a house Münter purchased in Murnau am Staffelsee in August 1909, significant collaborations took place that led to their participation in and organisation of avant-garde art groups.
In early 1909, for example, Münter and Kandinsky, along with their friends Werefkin and Jawlensky, became involved with the establishment of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM), an artists’ group that stood in opposition to the Munich Secession. Kandinsky was elected chair of the organisation, and the first NKVM exhibition was held at Galerie Thannhauser. This period for Kandinsky coincided with the drafting and revision for his first treatise on art Über das Geistige in der Kunst (first published by Reinhard Piper in December 1911), which called for the need to spiritually elevate art.
Building upon his ideas in art and growing dissatisfied with the direction the NKVM was taking, Kandinsky helped establish the new coalition of artists Der Blaue Reiter. Alongside Franz Marc (1880–1916), who Kandinsky had met in early 1911, the two developed plans for an almanac that would feature art from different periods that shared very little visual similarities with one another. This mission was spearheaded in order to promote the importance for artists to create from an ‘inner’ motivation (innere Notwendigkeit) rather than from a desire to copy what is seen in nature.
Two exhibitions were held, the first of which ran from 18 December 1911 until 1 January 1912 in Galerie Thannhauser to rival the ongoing NKVM exhibition––which was being held in the adjacent exhibition rooms––before travelling to other locations. The second exhibition was set up for spring of the same year and began at Galerie Goltz. Together with these presentations and the publication of the almanac (also published by Reinhard Piper in 1912), Der Blaue Reiter became one of the foremost significant artist-collectives in the twentieth century.
After his involvement with Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky was forced to leave Germany in August 1914 due to the onset of World War I. His close ties to Munich and the partnership between him and Münter eventually dissolved, having last seen one another in 1916. Munich undoubtedly left a deep impression in Kandinsky’s artistic career, laying the groundwork from which his ideas continued to develop over the next decades. While the city served as Kandinsky’s artistic starting point, the connections he made and the inspirations he gleaned from this early period stayed with him throughout his career.

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