Special Google Doodle on WW Kandinsky, the Russian Painter

An elderly character in an English novel would often send a picture  postcard with a single line – ‘travelling and learning’ !. In 2012, Christie's auctioned ‘Studie für Improvisation 8’ (Study for Improvisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation.  For many of us,  the day starts with Computer and Internet… searching many things and coming across more things – most of which we may not remember. And as we start the search on ‘google’ – the doodle’s impress us and lead us to read of the person / thing on which they are fashioned.  Today, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky’s 148th birthday is celebrated in a Google Doodle illustration.  The artist, who is credited with being the first painter to produce purely abstract works, used colour as an expression of emotion, often likening the process of painting to composing music. Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky [1866 – 1944] was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession — he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat; he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921.  He became a  French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seinein 1944. His career which spanned  five decades during which he was influenced by - among other artistic movements - Impressionism, Fauvism, Pointillism, Bauhaus architecture and abstract expressionism. Fifty seven of his paintings were confiscated by the Nazis during a raid on the Bauhaus art school and were later put on show in the State-sponsored exhibit “Degenerate Art” in 1937 before being destroyed. Kandinsky was also a keen art theorist, publishing his own book in 1912 called Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he set out his theory on how color could provoke a rich, sensory experience within the soul of the viewer. Google doodles appear as Google logos on special occasions.  Google has had several logos since its renaming from BackRub. The founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin had nicknamed their search engine ‘backrub’ as the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.  The doodles on Google homepage are intended to provide more fun and enjoyment whilst searching on Google.  They are extremely popular among the users and many eagerly await the release of  each new doodle. ~ not all of them are Universal – some would appear in a few regions only – this is a map of google doodle reach – perhaps this one is seen across all places ! With regards – S. Sampathkumar
16^th Dec 2014.