Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was a law lecturer until, at thirty, a Monet Haystack moved him to study painting in Munich. In Germany he co-founded the Blue Rider group and wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

He believed colours and shapes, like musical notes, could touch the soul directly, and was a pioneer of abstract art. He later taught at the Bauhaus and moved to France after the Nazis came to power.