Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

' . The Courier-Mail 25 June 1982 Kahdinsky: a joy to behold Art - AFTER YEARS of frustration which seemed endless, a dream has come true. i\t last. we have an art gallery such :is ;1rt and people deserve . The beauti• fol, spacious building has the capacity to hou se to advantage our own growing collection, as well as every kind of tem- porary exhibition . . Th is is an art gallery that will be a joy to visit again and ag~in, fora long time to come. Art, thts 1s certain, will reach mure people than was the case before. Of the five coinciding overseas exhi– bitions HI the gallery, I sha ll deal first with the Kandinsky exhibition - in– deed, a joy to behold . Vasily Kandinsky, or course, was a key figure in the birth of modern ab– stract art. , le is credited with having painted the first completely non-objec– tive painting in 1910. However, artists are not racehorses . By 191 :! sevcra I artists. independently, had arrived at abstract art ; which mean~ the time had come for a new ad – venture i11 ..rt and of the human spirit. i\ little difference in time hardly mat– ter, . What mailers mure is that Kandin– sk\'. bv 1910, had established a pro– foirnd philosophical foundation for ab– ~tract art. His book "Concerning The Spiritual Jn /\rt" became influential instantly af– ter it was published, a nd for many art– i,ts it still is. 1'andinskv was born in Moscow in 1866. Partly by circumstance and part– ly by choice, he wa s a cosmopolitan pcr,on. On his father's side there was a Mon– goli an princess in the ancestry. His Moscow-born mother had a German mother, whose German fairytales had a big impact on her grandson. After obtaining a degree in law and economics from Moscow University and being offered a university appoint· men!, Kandinsky, at the age of 30, de– cided to devote his life to art. He went to Munich to study painting and made his home in Bavaria until the outbreak of World War I. The first period of Kandinsky's work is characterised by rich color, symbol– ism and ·motion a I resonance . He also \IJ > at th e sp,:a rh,·a d of the avant – garde and, with his close friend Fran7. Marc, founded the "Blue Rider" move– mcnl. During World War 1. and in the first )'Cars after the Revolution. Kandi nsky was in Russia, holding important art– :1dministrat ive positions. In his paint– ings geometric elements, and _ma ybe the influence of Co ns truct1v1sm, aprearcd . When things became difficult for contemporary art and artists Kandin– sky returned to Germany; he accepted a teaching pos ition at Gropius's Bauhaus, first in Weimar and then in Dessau. There he found a congenial al mos– phcrc and Paul Klee became his best fricnci . With the coming to p,)wer of the Na- 7is the Bauha us wa~ forced to close. cnntcmporary arti st, were declared "degenerate", and Kandinsky. who had hcrnmc a German citi7cn, left for Par– J~. He li ved in an apa rtment in Neu ill)· ~11 r-Sc1nc. hc,·.,11n· :, I rcnl'l1 ci ti1cn in ' 1'1.\11, ,la ) Cd d11 n11µ the (ier111an o,cu– pation in World War II. and died in ,Franc~ in 1944 The four distin ct periods into which • rn < . I • . ~. . . <.' •,,,;,>' M ' • ' ~ \.' KANDINSKY'S "Pink-Sweet", painted in December 1929. , Kandinsky's oeuvre falls, coincide with the significant changes in his life. The Kand111;ky exhibition is a fine selection from the Solomon Guggcn." heim Museum and the Hilla von Rcbay Foundation in New York. It comprises marvellous works of all periods: ttie romantic Munich period, the transitional works done in Russia,. the Bauhaus period with its stress on graphic design , geometric forms and' subtle te~tures (including airbrush technique, first employed by his friend Klee) and, finally, the works of the Par• is period when, undiminished by his ad• vancing years, Kandinsky created a· wonderful world of fantasy - forms which show his interest in evolution and in the unity underlying cosmos and mi- crocosmos. . Even a new whimsicality creeps in: acrobatic acts arc performed by charm• ing. weightless forms in infinite space• . Kandinsky stilt has a message for us _today. His art strikes us as fresh as .C\'Cr. , Only art motivated by "inncr·neces~ sity" (his words), only art born of the union uf man's spirit with a spiritual universe achieves something that ad– vances the best potentials of the human race. To understand Ka ndinsky fµlly one has to be aware or the values in which he believed and arc expressed in his work . I shall try to throw more light on this in 111 y free, illustrated lecture on Sun•. da y al 2 p.m . in the auditorium at the Cultural Centre. - DR GERTRUDE LANGER , • .