The Waterfall, 1909 by Wassily Kandinsky Poster

Wassily Kandinsky - The Waterfall, 1909. Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Kandinsky painted The Waterfall at a turning point when he was transforming his naturalist landscapes into the abstract compositions for which he is best known. Inspired by the German countryside of Murnau, near Munich, Kandinsky playfully distorted the landscape's natural forms to the limits of figuration, creating a fantastical scene that foreshadows the artist's later lyrical abstractions. The bold colour palette of The Waterfall pays tribute to the French Fauvist artists whom Kandinsky admired on his multiple stays in Paris from 1904 to 1906.