Odessa. Port

"Odessa. Port" - An early, almost impressionistic canvas by Vasily Kandinsky. It was painted just three years after Kandinsky saw the “Stacks” by Claude Monet at the exhibition of French impressionists, a picture that literally turned his whole life upside down.

This Odessa landscape is still infinitely far from the Kandinsky that everyone knows. Before the first abstract canvas of the artist, another 13 years will pass. But the picture “Odessa. Port ”, like other early works of the artist, already outlines his movement to the pointless. In the best traditions of the Impressionist works, the visible objects here are still quite distinguishable, but the accuracy of their reproduction on the canvas is not as important as the transmission of light effects.

The southern Ukrainian city was a special place for Kandinsky. The family of the future artist moved to Odessa when he was five years old, here he spent his childhood and youth and received his first art and music education. Later, Kandinsky went to Moscow to receive a law degree, and then moved to Germany, but he still periodically returned to Odessa to see his relatives and ex-wife. Now on one of the buildings on Deribasovskaya Street, in which Kandinsky lived, you can find a plaque with a bust of the artist.


Author: Evgeny Sidelnikov.