Kandinsky face aux images | Exhibition Catalogue

Description

Drawn primarily from the collections of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, this exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the importance of images in Kandinsky's work, encompassing his painting, aesthetic theories, and teaching.

The catalogue's structure follows the exhibition's layout. The first section, "Memories," emphasizes the significance of photographs and postcards in the artist's early paintings, which often drew upon reminiscences of his travels (Russia, Tunisia, Italy). The second section, "Transmission," explores the influence of spiritualist imagery on his proto-abstract works of the 1910s. Focusing on the Blaue Reiter period, the third section, "Reproduction," presents Kandinsky as a true iconographer, employing photography to support comparative visual thinking. In the fourth section, "Legitimation," we discover how the painter drew upon a wide variety of images to substantiate his theory of forms. Finally, the last section, "Inspiration," is devoted to the influence of scientific imagery on Kandinsky's works of the 1930s, marked by the reappearance of biomorphic forms, more flexible and sinuous.