(14 Mar 2017) LEADIN:
Abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky are in an exhibition which showcases some of the artists most famous works produced during and after the Russian revolution.
The exhibition at the Mudec Museum in Milan aims to shed light on the painter's formative years up until he left Moscow for Germany in 1921.
STORYLINE:
The exhibit displays forty-nine works by Kandinsky alongside statues, toys and drawings from the era into which he was born and raised.
The aim is to give visitors a better understanding of the the artist's abstract masterpieces.
Entering the exhibition you quickly realise that it's not just the paintings you've come here to see, but also products of the culture which created Kandinsky himself.
Objects and drawings which influenced Kandinsky are placed strategically next to his paintings.
According to the Mudec's curator Silvia Burini he was heavily influenced by his travels around Russia in 1889.
Burini says: "As most of the pieces here come from Russian museums, we thought it would be a good idea to treat the theme of Kandinsky's journey towards abstraction by showing some of his masterpieces of abstract paintings but also by rebuilding some of his grammar and syntax for the visitor. So the theme of the journey is very concrete – he travels in 1889, in northern Russia in the Province of Vologda, where he sees a series of symbols that will be very important for the formation of his visual imaginary and these symbols will accompany him for over 20 years –these symbols will then emerge in his abstract paintings and become one of his most important sources of inspiration."
According to Burini: "He writes that he remembers during his whole life the small horse this played with his aunt, how he would built fake little horses, but the image of the horse is also one that comes from fairytales, Russian fairytales but also those from the Baltics, his grandmother was from the Baltics. It comes from the image of those Russian heroes that travels on these wonderful horses, but also from popular objects and toys that surround him; On the other hand there is also a horse with deeper meaning which is the one of St. George, Patron of Moscow, a very important icon for Kandinsky which is also on the front of the State Tretyakov Gallery that he would visit as a child. With that horse has even more meaning and is older, with a personal passion, and perhaps the return of this Wagnerian theme of the horse and the knight which is an important icon of symbolism at the beginning of the century – all these elements make the image of the horse and the knight one of the archetypes of Kandinsky's work. They are one of the most important elements of his grammar and syntax."
This fairytale side of Kandinsky is most obvious in his works portraying St. George, the patron saint of Moscow.
His childhood love of the horse, and the illustrious knight become potent symbols in his work.
Giuseppe Barbieri has created an interactive multimedia exhibition around Kandinsky's famous abstract paintings.
He says by deconstructing the shapes within the pictures he can repeat symbols which are repeated in Kandinsky's works.
Barbieri explains: "He says that his paintings have a big shape that surround other internal shapes, so we took one of his paintings and we kept the outside border, the big shape, and we lyophilized the internal shapes. In another painting we extracted all the shapes one by one to show how these forms and shapes come back in other works by Kandinsky meaning he has a syntax and repertory."
It was Kandinsky's first abstract painting.
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