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: Wassily Kandinsky painted the famous artwork 'The Scream'.

Accepted Answer

False. False. 'The Scream' was painted by Edvard Munch in 1893. Kandinsky is famous for abstract works like 'Composition VII'.

Question 3

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

Accepted Answer

False. The Centre Pompidou in Paris holds the largest collection, with over 1,500 works donated by Kandinsky's widow. The Guggenheim has over 150 works, but it is not the largest.

Question 4

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 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: Wassily Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus school in Germany.

Accepted Answer

True. True. Kandinsky was a faculty member at the Bauhaus from 1922 until its closure in 1933.

Question 8

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky was born in Vienna, Austria.

Accepted Answer

False. False. Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1866, not in Vienna. He later became a French citizen.

Question 9

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky co-founded the artist group Der Blaue Reiter.

Accepted Answer

True. True. Along with Franz Marc, Kandinsky founded the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter in Munich in 1911.

Question 10

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky never painted any figurative or representational art.

Accepted Answer

False. False. Kandinsky's early works, such as 'The Blue Rider' (1903), were figurative. He transitioned to abstraction around 1910.

Question 11

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

Accepted Answer

True. Kandinsky described his synesthetic experiences, such as seeing colors when hearing music, which profoundly influenced his abstract art and color theories.

Question 12

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 13

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky originally studied law and economics before becoming an artist.

Accepted Answer

True. True. Wassily Kandinsky pursued law and economics at the University of Moscow before switching to art at age 30.

Question 14

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky decided to become a painter after seeing a Monet painting of a haystack.

Accepted Answer

True. True. In 1895, Kandinsky saw Monet's 'Haystacks' at an exhibition and it inspired him to become an artist.

Question 15

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.

Question 16

True or false: Wassily Kandinsky studied painting under Paul Cézanne.

Accepted Answer

False. False. Kandinsky never studied under Cézanne. He began formal art training in Munich in 1896 under Anton Ažbe and later at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

Wassily Kandinsky Trivia Questions