A hungry heart

A man who strove, sought and found, Wassily Kandinsky pioneered not one, but two artistic movements against the tumultuous backdrop of early-20thcentury Europe, as Holly Black relates

WHEN the Nazis mounted an exhibition in Munich in 1937, their purpose was not to celebrate art, but condemn it. The so-called 'Entartete Kunst' or 'Degenerate Art' show was a macabre blockbuster designed to represent what was perceived to be the very worst of German society, specifically the trailblazers of the European avantgarde. The sprawling presentation, which consisted of 740 works confiscated from major institutions across the country, turned some of the greatest artists of the modern age into enemies of the state.

Among pieces by artists such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner hung a total of 14 paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian abstractionist who had long made Germany his home. These included Zweierlei Rot (Two kinds of red) from 1916, an expressive explosion of brushstrokes that was denounced for its apparent Bolshevik sensibilities, and Improvisation 10 (from 1910), a riot of colour designed to suggest a spiritual resonance.

The vitriolic caption scrawled across the wall read 'crazy at any price'.

The fact that the Nazi regime took such a deep dislike to Kandinsky's work should come as no surprise. Since the turn of the 20th century, he had pursued a form of art that did away with the rational or outwardly representational, instead searching for a transcendental power that could be evoked through light, colour and form. He is considered one of the earliest if not the earliest-proponents of pure abstraction in modern Europe.