When Sound Became Color

In 1896, Wassily Kandinsky sat through a Moscow performance of Wagner's Lohengrin and saw colors rise up as he listened. That cross-wiring of the senses, called synesthesia, convinced him painting could work like a symphony — moving people directly through color and form, with no recognizable object on the canvas at all.

Kandinsky's breakthrough came after years of figurative landscape painting. He decided that pure abstraction could reach the soul the way music does — with no need to show trees, rivers, or faces. He dated his famous First Abstract Watercolour to 1910, which would make it one of the earliest fully abstract works — though many scholars believe he backdated it and that it was actually painted around 1913, possibly to claim priority as the first abstract painter.