Built In, Not Learned

Kandinsky's boldest claim was that a color's emotional pull is built into the color itself, not just a habit we pick up. A note on a violin moves us whether or not we can name it, he argued, and color should work the same way — striking the viewer before any thought arrives. That belief is what let him drop recognizable subjects entirely.

He taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933, where his ideas about color theory and geometric form influenced architecture, design, and typography. When the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus, they labeled his work degenerate art.