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How did Wassily Kandinsky’s final Paris paintings combine organic and geometric forms?
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Wassily Kandinsky
Painting with Green Center, oil on canvas by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913; in the Art Institute of Chicago.
During his final years in Paris, Wassily Kandinsky synthesized the organic style of his earlier Munich period with the geometric approach he developed at the Bauhaus.1
He began referring to his work as "concrete" rather than abstract art, creating a visual language composed of signs that resemble pictographs or hieroglyphs. These forms often evoke organic life, such as aquatic larvae, occasionally interspersed with figurative elements like a human face or a hand. This synthesis allowed him to explore what he described as the "symbolic character of physical substances," moving away from the influence of scientific positivism. Notable examples of this period include works such as Violet Dominant, Dominant Curve, and Moderation.1