Upward by Vasily Kandinsky, 1929

Upward by Vasily Kandinsky, 1929, oil on cardboard, 27 1/2 x 19 1/4 inches (70 x 49 cm), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian-born painter and art theorist, a pioneer of abstract art. Kandinsky and moved to Munich in 1896. Kandinsky's early work was influenced by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, but by the early 1910s, he had begun to move away from representational art and began creating purely abstract works. He wrote several influential books on the spiritual and theoretical aspects of art, including "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1911) and "Point and Line to Plane" (1926). He was a member of the Blue Rider movement.