Wassily Kandinsky (1866 –1944) was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. 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 Dorbat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Azbe’s private school and then at the Academy of Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 to 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
Two paintings of this artist are held in the European Gallery of Fine Arts Museum, in Saadabad Complex.