Kandinsky : La musique des couleurs

Exhibition at the Musée de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris, 15 October 2025 – 1 February 2026

A contemporary of Mussorgsky and the new musical schools inspired by Russian folklore, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) grew up in Moscow and Odessa in a cultured family. As an amateur, he played the cello and harmonium, and soon became enthusiastic about Wagner. Sharpening his thinking alongside avant-garde musicians such as Nikolai Kulbin, Sergei Taneyev and Thomas von Hartmann, Kandinsky reinvented the language of painting following the abstract model of music, as evidenced in particular by his series of Improvisations and Compositions.

This exhibition catalogue places the painter's work in the musical effervescence of his time for the first time, from his Russian landscapes to his last Compositions. It brings together nearly 200 works and studio objects (scores, records, books, tools, etc.) by Kandinsky, which express the fundamental place of music in his daily life, in his vocation as an artist and in the evolution of his practice towards abstraction.