Question 1

True or false: Kandinsky never sold a single painting during his lifetime and died in poverty.

Accepted Answer

False. He was quite successful, selling works internationally. He taught at the Bauhaus and died comfortably in France.

Question 2

True or false: Kandinsky claimed he could hear colors and see sounds, a condition called synesthesia.

Accepted Answer

True. He likely had synesthesia, which profoundly influenced his abstract art and color theories.

Question 3

True or false: Kandinsky wrote a famous book arguing that art should be purely logical, like mathematics.

Accepted Answer

False. His book 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art' argued for emotional and spiritual expression, not cold logic.

Question 4

True or false: The Guggenheim Museum in New York holds the largest collection of Kandinsky's work in the world.

Accepted Answer

True. Solomon R. Guggenheim was a major collector of Kandinsky, and the museum owns over 150 of his works.

Question 5

True or false: Kandinsky was a lawyer before he became an artist at age 30.

Accepted Answer

True. He studied law and economics, then taught at a university, before abandoning it all for painting in 1896.

Question 6

True or false: Kandinsky's abstract style was partly inspired by his experience of seeing one of his own paintings upside down.

Accepted Answer

True. He realized an upside-down painting of his looked beautiful and free, which helped him abandon representational art.

Question 7

True or false: Kandinsky was a founding member of the Nazi-approved art group 'Der Blaue Reiter'.

Accepted Answer

False. Der Blaue Reiter was formed in 1911, decades before the Nazis. The Nazis later condemned his work as 'degenerate art'.

Question 8

True or false: Kandinsky painted 'Composition VII' in a single day without any preliminary sketches.

Accepted Answer

False. He made over 30 preparatory sketches and watercolors for that complex painting. It was meticulously planned.

Wassily Kandinsky Trivia Questions