The Russian Wassily Kandinsky in Rovigo

Wassily Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow and therefore we could define him as a "Russian" in all respects both yesterday and today.

As I write these lines, I am dismayed to witness the havoc of the war that Russia governed by Vladimir Putin has decided to fight against Ukraine.

Even distinguishing between those who govern and the people, the Russians are not receiving much sympathy at the moment. Yet there are thousands of Russians who courageously demonstrate against the war, risking 15 years of imprisonment.

But what kind of "Russian" was Kandinsky?

When Kandinsky was born, Russia was governed by the Tsar and Wassily, thanks to his family's wealth, lived in Munich.

This great economic possibility of the family allowed him to become a painter widely considered the founder of abstractionism, or the maximum freedom in painting.

History tells us the succession of the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise to absolute power.

In 1932, to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the art critic Nikolai Punin (only one letter, but a huge difference from Putin) organized an exhibition of over two thousand works in Leningrad, to show the liveliness and experiments of the avant-garde Russian.

In addition to Kandinsky here are Chagall, Malevic, Tatlin, Rodchenko etc.

In the same year, Stalin brought the painters into line with a decree dissolving the independent groups and the avant-garde and dictating the lines for a single painting: Socialist Realism as an expression of communist ideology (Stalin-style obviously).

Things were no better in Germany, where Hitler had a "degenerate art exhibition" organized in 1937 where as many as 50 works were by Kandinsky who, therefore, moved to France.

Dictatorships really don't like Wassily Kandinsky's painting, just as dictators don't like the freedom... of others.

In Rovigo we can see 80 works by Kandinsky exhibited at Palazzo Roverella.

Appreciate his journey from figurative painting to the freedom of shapes and colors.

A hope that another path towards peace and freedom of peoples who will not have to endure dictatorships, wars and innocent deaths again in 2022 can come true today.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini