SILLY WASSILY
by Trine Grillo

Can you hear that painting?”

“Don’t be silly, Wassily,” his mother must have said.

To hear a painting sounds silly, but Wassily Kandinsky wasn’t being silly at all.  He was a musician and an artist. It is believed he had an ability called synaesthesia. When he saw colors, he heard music. And when he heard music, he could see colors.  When he walked into a brightly colored house or church, he imagined that he was moving into a painting.

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866. He began learning about art and music when he was three years old. As he grew up, he would draw and paint and write poems. He learned to play the piano and the cello. When he was 13 years old, he had saved enough money to buy himself a paint box.

“Where did you get the idea for that painting?” people would ask.

“I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas… and I made them sing…,” was his reply.

Abstractions

A Kandinsky painting is full of bold lines, shapes, and dazzling colors that seem to move wildly across the page. This type of picture is called abstract art. One famous Kandinsky is named Sea Battle. You can’t really see a battle, but he wanted us to look at it and feel the courage and excitement of a sea battle – fiery cannons, crashing waves, and confusion on the decks. You can almost feel the sea spray whip against your face!

Wassily also enjoyed painting triangles. The painting he named Pinnacles and Arch shows triangles of many sizes and colors on a black canvas. A pinnacle is a point or a high peak. His triangles look like pointed rooftops, fluttering kites, windy sailboats, and flapping tents dancing all together across a night sky.

It’s OK to Change Your Mind

As an adult, Wassily Kandinsky worked as a lawyer. When he was about 35 years old, he changed his mind, deciding to teach art in schools and museums. Many of his students learned to paint what they could see and hear.

He would tell them, “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key and then another to cause vibration in the soul.”

Express Yourself!

Why don’t you try to create a painting like a Kandinsky?  Gather your paint, paper, and brushes and find a peaceful spot where you can concentrate. Turn on your favorite music, and paint what you hear. Maybe those who look at it will see the music and hear the colors on your canvas, too.