The comprehensive exhibition showcases the life and work of one of the most influential and best-loved European modernists.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) joins forces with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to present a comprehensive exhibition of one of the great innovators of European abstraction, Vasily Kandinsky. The largest exhibition of his work ever to be seen in Australia, Kandinsky traces the artist’s beginnings in Munich, his return to his birthplace of Moscow with the outbreak of World War I, the interwar years in Germany where he was an instructor at the Bauhaus, and his final experimental period in Paris. It’s curated for Sydney by Megan Fontanella, curator of modern art and provenance at the Guggenheim, with Jackie Dunn, senior curator of exhibitions at AGNSW.
Opening on Saturday November 4, 2023 and running until Sunday March 10, 2024, the exhibition features more than 50 works, including some of the artist’s most revered paintings on loan from the Guggenheim (home to one of the world’s most comprehensive Kandinsky collections). Highlights include his early career masterpiece Blue Mountain (1908–09); Painting with white border (1913), inspired by a trip to Moscow; Dominant Curve (1936), which sees the artist break away from harsher Bauhaus geometry in favour of more organic shapes and expressions; and Composition 8 (1923), which Kandinsky himself regarded as the pinnacle of his post-war achievements.
Kandinsky also features a new program exploring the relationship between the artist and music, as well as a specially commissioned project by Desmond Lazaro drawing inspiration from the ideas that influenced Kandinsky.
Kandinsky is part of the Sydney International Art Series 2023–24, bringing the works of internationally renowned artists exclusively to Sydney. Other exhibitions in the series include Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? at AGNSW and Tacita Dean at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
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This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
