The Bauhaus movement was arguably the single most influential modernist art school of the 20th century. Its approach to teaching, and relationship between art, society, and technology, had a major impact both in Europe and in the United States long after its closure under Nazi pressure in 1933.
Late 19th century is where the origins of Bauhaus lies. In anxieties about the soullessness of modern manufacturing and the fear that art will loss social relevance. The Bauhaus aimed to reunite fine art and creating practical objects with the soul of artwork.
Wassily Kandinsky (1886 - 1944) is considered to be the originator of abstract art, and believed that art could visually express musical compositions. Kandinsky, who was also an accomplished musician, saw colour when he heard music, and associated a colour’s tone with musical timbre, hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound.
The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul. - Wassily Kandinsky
'Yellow-Red-Blue' is a complex work that is built up around three key visual areas, dominated by yellow, red, and blue shapes respectively. The colours transform the art into two overall zones of visual attention. On the right-hand side of the canvas, formed from the interlocking red cross and blue circle, and one around the yellow rectangle to the left, embossed against a deeper/darker shade of ochre.
The variety in visual weight, layering and positioning in the negative and positive space is implied by effects of colour and shading, as the buoyancy of the yellow contrasts with the darker red tones, deepening further into purple and blue. Both colour differences can be distinguished by their shape style, curvilinear red and blues and the straight edged yellow. The split down the middle with opposite background colours creates an interaction as though the primary colours and shapes are at a war with their different energies.
Art historian Annagret Hoberg notes, however, the connotations of this painting extend beyond this, taking in more figurative realms: " two centres...conjure anthropological associations. While in the yellow field one might see a human profile due to the structure of the lines and circles, the intertwining of red and blue form with the black diagonal is reminiscent of the theme of the battle between Saint George and the dragon". Perhaps these more human associations are what explain the iconic status of Kandinsky's abstract paintings in modern art history.
Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) was a Swiss-born artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored colour theory.
Within this canvas from 1922, Klee has created delicate, translucent geometric shapes - squares, rectangles and domes - picked out in gradations of primary colours.
A single red circle floats in the upper centre, revealing itself, to be a titular hot-air balloon. This illustrative flourish exemplifies Klee's whimsical, associative use of the geometric compositional arrangements for which the Bauhaus became famous.
The glowing shapes, reminiscent of stained glass, are placed asymmetrically to create a visual rhythm, conducted by vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines, that seems both ordered and spontaneous. Klee's work - both sophisticated and primitive, figurative and otherworldly - had a noted impact on later artists in America and Europe.
Until Next time, Live and Laugh,
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