Pioneering work by the great modernist painter, considered by many to be the father of abstract art and a leader in the movement to free art from traditional bonds. Kandinsky's provocative thoughts on color theory, nature of art. Analysis of Picasso, Matisse, earlier masters. 12 illustrations.

Point and Line to Plane can be seen as a continuation of Wassily Kandinsky's seminal treatise On the Spiritual in Art. Kandinsky's thesis is that different constellations of point, line and surface have different emotional effects on the viewer. Starting from the point (which represents the most concentrated and minimal graphic form), he understands all painterly forms as being a play of forces and counterforces: of contrasts.

In this famous work by a pioneer in the movement to free art from the bonds of tradition-a work long considered essential to understanding the evolution of 20th-century art-Kandinsky explores the role of the line, point and other key elements of non-objective painting. 127 illustrations.

But despite their patent and well-ordered security, despite their infallible principles, there lurks in these higher segments a hidden fear, a nervous trembling, a sense of insecurity. And this is due to their upbringing. They know that the sages, statesmen and artists whom today they revere, were yesterday spurned as swindlers and charlatans.

Aparecido en 1926, Punto y linea sobre el plano es la continuacion organica de otro texto de Kandinsky tambien publicado por Paidos, De lo espiritual en el arte, y debe su origen, en su mayor parte, a la tarea que su autor habia asumido en la Bauhaus desde 1922. En efecto, tanto en su pintura como en sus ideas esteticas, Kandinsky mostro siempre una personalidad absolutamente vanguardista y provocadora de acaloradas polemicas. Y, en este sentido, la presente obra es uno de sus trabajos fundamentales, ya que, a la par que una esclarecedora contribucion al analisis de los elementos esenciales del quehacer pictorico, constituye una aportacion basica a la busqueda de un metodo generico para las investigaciones de las ciencias artisticas. El libro, finalmente, tambien revela a Kandinsky como un artista apasionado y siempre deseoso de explicar y explicarse las razones primeras y mas profundas de esa extrana y singular aventura que es la creacion artistica.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1914 Edition.

All art students are advised to read "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," a short masterpiece by Wassily Kandinsky. This classic best explains the concepts that lead to abstract painting in the modern era Kandinsky recognized the connection between music and painting. He also suggested that artists free themselves from the material world so that they can express their inner impulses. Thus the abstract painting requires contemplation to reveal its meaning. Furthermore, the meaning may be a projection of the inner life of the viewer as much as it is the inner life of the artists. This concept is not new to music but it certainly was new to painting in 1911. Once considered a radical idea, the spiritual aspect of abstract art is now a given in culture. Wassily Kandinsky offers some very insightful comments regarding his contemporaries, recognizing Matisse as the 20th century master of color and Picasso as the 20th century master of line. He faults them both, however, for not making the final step toward complete abandonment of the physical world. In "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," Kandinsky also asserts that imitative painting of other eras was a deadly trap for the artist, yet responding to the eternal call of the unconscious forces in an earlier period of art history was a valid area of exploration. Kandinsky believed that art progressed, that artistic concepts built on each other and that there was a triangle of artistic conception that moved forward to some end point, yet to be discovered. Kandinsky warns against pattern painting, which he thought would lead to monotony and away from spirituality. Every artist owes it to themselves to read "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." Though short, this book is the classic on which much art history, philosophy, and practice has been based.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1914 Edition.

The spiritual life of human-kind follows the shape of a pyramid, occasionally rising to an apex of spiritual perception when an artist of genius comes forward to lead the way, and sinking to the bottom of the pyramid when culture produces nothing but decadence. The colors a painter smears onto a canvas can delight the eye, but they can also cause the viewer to receive vibrations that resonate within the soul. Born in Russia in 1866, Kandinsky was a pioneer of the abstract, who used "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" to argue for the transcendental importance of his vocation.

In Concerning the spiritual in art, Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a large triangle similar to a pyramid; the artist has the task and the mission of leading others to the top by the exercise of his talent. The point of the triangle is constituted only by some individuals who bring the sublime bread to other people. It is a spiritual triangle which moves forwards and rises slowly, even if it sometimes remains immobile. During decadent periods, souls fall to the bottom of the Triangle and men only search for external success and ignore purely spiritual forces. When we look at colours on the painter's palette, a double effect happens: a purely physical effect on the eye, charmed by the beauty of colours firstly, which provokes a joyful impression as when we eat a delicacy. But this effect can be much deeper and causes an emotion and a vibration of the soul, or an inner resonance, which is a purely spiritual effect, by which the colour touches the soul itself. The inner necessity is for Kandinsky the principle of the art and the foundation of forms and colours' harmony. He defines it as the principle of the efficient contact of the form with the human soul. Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content which is the effect it produces on the one who looks at it attentively. This inner necessity is the right of the artist to an unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes a crime if it is not founded on such a necessity. The art work is born from the inner necessity of the artist in a mysterious, enigmatic and mystic way, and then it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject animated by a spiritual breath. (createandshare.net)

Excerpt: ...There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age. An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives. Like ourselves, these artists sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form.