SOURCE: "Concerning the Western Spiritual in Russian Art: Vasily Kandinsky," in Russia Imagined: Art, Culture, and National Identity, 1840-1995, Peter Lang, 1997, pp. 45-59.

In the following essay, Williams chronicles Kandinsky' s interest in religious mysticism and theosophy and discusses its influence on his work.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution Bolshevism coexisted with Bohemia. Hundreds of artists and intellectuals rushed to help build a new society in which they might play a role, painting Agitprop trains, erecting monuments, composing symphonies for conductorless orchestras, reading Futurist poetry, filming the storming of the Winter Palace, directing workers' plays, and designing skyscrapers. Much of their art, however, was neither new nor Russian, but a development of pre-1914 avant-garde tendencies which many Russians had encountered in Europe. Munich was especially important as a transmitter of such tendencies. A number of young Russians studied art there before the First World War...