Wassily Kandinsky

Trained as a lawyer, turned to painting at thirty, and produced some of the first entirely abstract pictures in Europe on the argument that colour and form work as music does. He taught at the Bauhaus until the Nazis closed it and his work was shown in the Degenerate Art exhibition.

• Lived: 1866 CE – 1944 CE
• Nationality: russian
• Roles: painter, writer