He helped to found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Association), becoming its president in 1909, but it disbanded in 1911. In 1910, he wrote his theoretical treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and in 1911, he formed a new group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), with other artists including Jawlensky, von Werefkin, August Macke (1887–1914) and Franz Marc (1880–1916). The name came from one of his paintings of 1903 and because he believed blue was the color of spirituality. The artists’ individual approaches varied but they all aimed to express spiritual truths through their work. Kandinsky’s reputation grew and his work became even more rhythmic and abstract. By the start of World War I, Kandinsky had brought the group to an end and returned to Moscow. He went back to Germany seven years later, where he taught at the Bauhaus School until 1933. After that, he moved to France where he remained for the rest of his life.
Key Works
Houses in Murnau on Obermarkt 1908, COLLECTION THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA, MADRID, SPAIN
Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula 1908, STÄDTISCHE GALERIE IM LENBACHHAUS, MUNICH, GERMANY
Cossacks 1910–11, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON, UK
Moscow I 1916, THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
Composition VIII 1923, THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK, US
MATISSE
1869–1954 • FAUVISM, EXPRESSIONISM
Yellow Odalisque
1937 OIL ON CANVAS
55.2 × 46 CM (21¾ × 18 IN)
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PENNSYLVANIA, US
Enchanted by Islamic patterns and the brilliant light, rich colors and Moorish architecture of the Mediterranean and North Africa, in the 1920s and 1930s Matisse painted several interior views of women in harems. He juxtaposed contrastingly patterned surfaces, vibrant colors and assorted textures, displaying his passion for color, pattern and diverse exotic and cultural influences.
One of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century, Henri Matisse is often referred to as the “master of color.” In 1905, he became the leader of a group of artists known as Les Fauves (the Wild Beasts), because of their use of explosive colors, rough textures and unrestrained flat patterns.
With his orderly and academic mind, Matisse would probably have made a great lawyer. Instead he became one of the most important French artists of the 20th century. Born in northern France, the son of a grain merchant, he studied for a career in law. At 21, while recovering from appendicitis, his mother bought him a box of paints and he discovered the exhilaration of painting. He left law studies, moved to Paris and began studying art under Moreau and then Odilon Redon (1840–1916). His early work consisted mainly of fairly traditional landscapes and still lifes, but after visiting the painter John Peter Russell (1858–1930) in Brittany, he discovered Impressionism and the work of van Gogh and began experimenting with brighter colors and freer styles.
Matisse was influenced by many diverse sources, including Poussin, Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Seurat and Signac. In 1898, after his honeymoon to Corsica, his interest in light and color intensified. In 1904 he spent the summer with Signac in St. Tropez in the south of France, and in 1905 he went south again with André Derain (1880–1954). Later that year, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne with Derain, Albert Marquet (1875–1947), Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958), Georges Rouault (1871–1958) and others—an exhibition set up to challenge the conventional Paris Salon. The work they exhibited broke with the tradition of trying to represent the natural world, instead using distorted colors and shapes to depict emotion. Visitors were shocked and the art critic Louis Vauxcelles scornfully commented that the artists painted like wild beasts, unintentionally giving the new style its name: Fauvism. Matisse became the recognized leader of the group.
Within a few years the Fauve Movement ended, but Matisse continued developing new ideas. In 1906 he visited Algeria and Morocco, where the radiant light, exotic surroundings and Moorish architecture inspired him. In 1910 he went to an exhibition of Islamic art in Munich and in 1911, he visited Seville. From 1914 to 1918 he divided his time between Collioure (a small fishing village in the south of France), Paris and Nice. He posed his models amid brightly colored textiles and ceramics, using color and pattern to evoke the brightness and intense heat of Africa and the Mediterranean. In his paintings, every element has a function, but the most important was always color. Never trying to imitate nature, his work portrayed happiness or calmness. He designed stage sets, ballet costumes and stained glass and also illustrated books. Although quite disabled after 1941, he continued to work into his old age, experimenting with innovative printing and paper cut-out effects.
Key Works
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) 1905, STATENS MUSEUM FOR KUNST, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
The Dance 1909–10, STATE HERMITAGE, ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
Interior in Eggplants 1911–12, MUSÉE DE PEINTURE ET DE SCULPTURE, GRENOBLE, FRANCE
Bathers by a River 1916–17, ART INSTITUTE, CHICAGO, IL, US
The Snail 1952, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
MONDRIAN
1872–1944 • DE STIJL, NEO-PLASTICISM
Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red
1937–42 OIL ON CANVAS
72.7 × 69.2 CM (28½ × 27 IN)
TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
Mondrian wanted his work to be a part of its surroundings, not cut off by a frame. This painting conveys peace, energy and rhythm in an asymmetrical, yet balanced composition. The edges are as important as the center of the canvas. Like music, it was intended to be pleasurable within the often aggressively paced modern world.
A pioneer of purely abstract art, Piet Mondriaan developed completely non-representational art through the mystical principles of Theosophy and was an important contributor to the De Stijl Movement and group. His overwhelming influence on the art and design of the 20th century came as much from his theoretical writing as from his painting.
Mondrian (who dropped the extra letter “a” in his surname in about 1906) was born in Amersfoort in the Netherlands. His father was a headmaster and drawing teacher and to please him, Mondrian first studied to be a teacher. After graduating in 1892, though, he joined Amsterdam’s Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied painting with the artist August Allebé (1838–1927). He began teaching in a primary school while also painting portraits and making copies of the old masters in local museums. He also began painting outdoors in the traditional Dutch landscape style and then in the style of the Impressionists.
In 1903, he traveled to Spain and then to Brabant in Belgium, and from then on his paintings became brighter, often made up of dots, like Pointillism, and vivid colors, like Fauvism; they also frequently contained Symbolist elements. In 1908, Mondrian visited the Dutch Art Nouveau artist Jan Toorop (1858–1928), and the following year he joined the Theosophic Organization, where the theories of Theosophy (the study of religious philosophy) were discussed in-depth. Between 1912 and 1914, he divided his time between Paris and the Netherlands, becoming strongly inspired by Cubism and producing a series of paintings of a tree, progressively simplifying it, reducing it from a complex, naturalistic image to an uncomplicated, almost abstract design of straight lines and flat colors. By 1914, he had begun to paint broad planes of color, predominantly featuring patterns of horizontal and vertical lines. He was starting to become convinced that to imitate the real, three-dimensional world on a flat surface was superficial. He believed that artists should seek inner truths, rather than simply copying the objects around them. In his search for expression through pure form and color, he limited his palette to the three primary colors, plus black, white and gray, with only horizontal and vertical lines.