Alongside his development of a revolutionary abstract style, Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) demonstrated an ambition to go beyond conventional easel painting. His famous large paintings with musical and theatrical associations transformed into veritable environments. The catalogue explores the evolution of a Gesamtkunstwerk in the work of Kandinsky including essays by leading Kandinsky scholars on painting as a total work of art, or the artist's interest...

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of 20th-century art. Nowadays he is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting. Together with Franz Marc and others he founded the group of artists known as the "Blane Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the First...