Vassily Kandinsky

"As a painter and a teacher, and co-founder of the Blaue Reiter, the Russian-born artist Vasily Kandinsky has played a leading role in the unfolding of modern art. Greatly influenced by music -- "music is the ultimate teacher," he once averred -- Kandinsky painted his first abstract compositions during his Bavarian period (1906-1914), and these riotously musical canvases, with their intense symphonies of color and wildly jostling forms, have influenced successive generations of abstract artists to the present day"--Publisher.