Kandinsky and Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Theosophy, Colour and Sound

The 1911 book, Theosophy, Thought-Forms, yellow as a trumpet and blue as an organ, the Blue Rider: the esoteric roots of abstract painting.

In December 1911 the Munich publisher Piper issued a book destined to become one of the founding texts of modern art: Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky, dated 1912 on its title page. The Russian painter argued that art should arise from an inner necessity and become an instrument for elevating the soul, in an age that in his view was dominated by materialism and had lost the sense of the spirit.

From Moscow to Munich

Kandinsky, born in Moscow in 1866, studied law and economics and began a university career before devoting himself to painting, moving to Munich in 1896. He later recounted two decisive experiences in Moscow: seeing one of Monet's Haystacks, which struck him because the subject almost vanished behind the colour, and a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre, during which he seemed to see the colours evoked by the music.

Theosophy, colour and sound

Concerning the Spiritual in Art explicitly cites Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and names Rudolf Steiner. Kandinsky also knew Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater, an illustrated book from the early twentieth century that claimed to show the colours and shapes given off by thoughts and emotions. These texts suggested to him that colours and forms could act directly on the soul, independently of the objects represented.

In the book colours are described as voices in an orchestra. Yellow, an earthly and aggressive colour, recalls the shrill sound of a trumpet; blue, deep and celestial, comes close to the flute, the cello or the organ depending on its shade; green is motionless and calm. Kandinsky also compares the spiritual life of humanity to a great triangle slowly moving upwards, led by a few artists at its apex.

The Blue Rider and the Compositions

In the same year, 1911, Kandinsky founded the Blue Rider, Der Blaue Reiter, with Franz Marc, and in 1912 the group published an almanac with essays, reproductions of folk, children's and non-European art and a stage composition by Kandinsky himself, The Yellow Sound. These were years of intense experiment: his canvases, titled Improvisations, Impressions and Compositions like pieces of music, gradually abandoned reference to objects. The group's name joined two elements dear to its founders: the colour blue and the Romantic figure of the rider.

Composition VII, painted in 1913 and now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, is considered one of the peaks of this phase: a large canvas of about two metres by three, preceded by numerous preparatory studies. Within it scholars recognise apocalyptic themes, such as the flood, the last judgement and the resurrection, reduced to whirlwinds of colour. For Kandinsky abstraction was not a renunciation of meaning but the means of reaching a deeper spiritual content.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art was translated into many languages and influenced generations of artists, from the Bauhaus, where Kandinsky taught from 1922, to American Abstract Expressionism. The book shows how the birth of abstract painting is intertwined with the esoteric currents of the early twentieth century, in a dialogue that other painters, from Hilma af Klint to František Kupka and Piet Mondrian, were conducting in the same years.