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<CENTER><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, Serif" size="7" color="ababab">Edgar Degas</FONT><BR>
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<P>Wassily Kandinsky
(1866-1944)
Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky is was one of the founding fathers of abstract painting. Spending many years of his life in Germany, Kandinsky became a vital figure in the development of German expressionism.
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<TD><FONT color="3e2785">Degas was born on July 19th, 1834, his father was an affluent banker. As a young man, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he developed into an excellent draughtsman. After a period painting classical subjects, Degas was beginning to take a greater interest in contemporary themes by 1865. Although commonly described as an impressionist, capturing the effects of light wasn't central to Degas' approach, rather, he completed most of his paintings in the studio. His central themes were those of everyday life; horse racing, circuses,
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were all great influences.</FONT> </TD>
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<TD><A href="http://www.worldgallery.co.uk/cgi/framer.pl?key_full_fs=full&record_id=50267&picture=/img/frame/shor/ztb_im_1136.jpg" target="_parent"><IMG src="img/artists/degas.jpg" width="100" height="105" border="0" alt="Nude Woman Drying Her Foot by Degas"></A></TD>
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<TD colspan="2">Kandinsky was born in Moscow on Dec. 4, 1866, and spent his early childhood in Odessa. His parents played the piano and the zither and Kandinsky himself learned to play the piano and cello from an early age. Music later turned out to be a major influence in his paintings, as is often reflected in their titles; Improvisations, Impressions, and Compositions. In 1886, he enrolled at the University of Moscow and after completing his studies in law, became a lecturer there.
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<TD>After a visit in 1895 to an exhibition of French impressionist paintings in Moscow, Kandinsky decided to become a painter and moved to Munich, Germany.
Between 1900 and 1910 Kandinsky traveled widely, including visits to Paris where he encountered Paul Gauguin, the neoimpressionists, and fauvism (a style with aggressive use of brilliant colors). He began developing his ideas concerning the power of pure color and nonrepresentational painting. In 1909 Kandinsky helped found the New Artists' Association in Munich.
Kandinsky painted his first abstract watercolor in 1910 and began formulating his important theoretical study, 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art', which was published originally in German in 1912.
In this work he examined the psychological effects of color and made comparisons between painting and music.
Together with the German painter Franz Marc, Kandinsky became a leader in the influential Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) movement, an expressionist group.
With the outbreak of World War I, Kandinsky left Germany to return to Russia, where he taught and organized numerous artistic activities. He went back to Germany in 1921 and became one of the principal teachers at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, remaining with the school until it was closed by the Nazi regime in 1933. Kandinsky then moved to Paris, where he stayed until his death on Dec. 13, 1944.
A significant change took place in Kandinsky's work during the 1920s. His style evolved into geometric forms--points, bundles of lines, circles, and triangles. During the last decade of his life, Kandinsky blended the free, intuitive image of his earlier years with the geometric forms of his later, Bauhaus period. <BR>
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