# Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks - Hardcover

by **Larry Warsh** (Editor), **Dieter Buchhart** (Editor), **Wassily Kandinsky** (Author)

**A revelatory collection of the artist's sketches and preparatory drawings, featuring many that have never been published before**

The great Russian modernist painter and theorist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Few documents provide more insight into his evolution from figural to abstract art--or into the development of abstraction in the early twentieth century--than the pages of his sketchbooks. Featuring previously unpublished drawings, _Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks_ is a comprehensive selection of hundreds of sketches from twelve notebooks Kandinsky kept between 1889 and 1935. Beginning with early figure studies, architectural sketches, and landscapes, the notebooks reveal a process of exploration that would lead Kandinsky from his first experiments in geometric abstraction to paintings that reshaped modernism.

Demonstrating Kandinsky's mastery of color, line, shape, composition, and movement, the book includes notes and preparatory studies for major paintings, such as the "analytical drawing" for _Composition VII_ (1913), the first study for _Several Circles_ (1926), and _Study for Composition IX_, a preliminary working of his 1936 masterpiece. Visually stunning, the book offers a remarkable, intimate look at how Kandinsky sought to discover nothing less than a spiritually transcendent form of art.

### Author Biography

**Wassily Kandinsky** (1866-1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist and one of the pioneers of pure abstraction in early twentieth-century art. **Larry Warsh** has been active in the art world for more than thirty years as a publisher and artist-collaborator, and was a founding member of the Basquiat Authentication Committee. He is the editor of the ISMs series, including _Holzer-isms_ and _Abramovic-isms_, as well as Basquiat's _The Notebooks_ and _James Rosenquist: Collages, Drawings, and Paintings in Process_ (all Princeton), among many other books. **Dieter Buchhart** is a curator and art critic who has organized exhibitions at museums around the world, including the Guggenheim Bilbao, Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Mus?e d'Art Moderne de Paris. He writes frequently for _Kunstforum International._

**Number of Pages:** 224

**Dimensions:** 1.5 x 10.6 x 8.5 IN

**Publication Date:** February 04, 2025

## Details

- **Price:** 39.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 39.95 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks - Hardcover
- Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks - Hardcover

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