Wasilly Kandinsky, 1866-1944

Murnau, Dorfstrasse (A Village Street), oil on cardboard, later mounted on wood panel, 48 x 69.5 cm, The Merzbacher collection, Switzerland

"Wassily Kandinsky was born on December, 16th (4), 1866 in Moscow, in a well-to-do family of a businessman in a good cultural environment. In 1871 the family moved to Odessa where his father ran his tea factory. There, alongside with attending a classical gymnasium (grammar school), the boy learned to play the piano and the cello and took to drawing with a coach. "I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality", he wrote later. In Kandinsky's works of his childhood period we can find rather specific color combinations, which he explained by the fact that "each color lives by its mysterious life". "

http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/