Nina Kandinsky

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Nina Kandinsky (1924). Photo by Hugo Erfurth
Wassily Kandinsky: Nina Kandinsky (1917)
Wassily Kandinsky: Nina Kandinsky (right) and her sister at the Abrikossow family estate in Akhtyrka (near Moscow) (1917)
Wassily Kandinsky: To the Unknown Voice (1916)
Klee and Kandinsky's house in the Meisterhaussiedlung.

Nina Kandinsky (born Nina Nikolajewna Andreevskaja around 1896 in the Russian Empire ; died September 2, 1980 in Gstaad ) was Wassily Kandinsky’s second wife and after his death the administrator of his inheritance.

Life

Nina Nikolajewna Andreevskaja has never revealed her date of birth; according to Annegret Hoberg (2008) she was twenty years old when she met Kandinsky in 1916; she was by her own account the daughter of a Russian general. In 1916 she met the much older painter Wassily Kandinsky, who had been divorced since 1911, in Moscow when he had returned from Germany to the tsarist empire after the outbreak of the First World War. During his hasty departure to Switzerland, he and his long-time partner Gabriele Münter had to leave his pictures behind in Germany. While Münter, as a woman in art, was in artistic competition with Kandinsky all her life, Nina was able to deal with the inferiority towards Wassily and took on her role at Kandinsky's side as “only wife”. Nina and Wassily married in February 1917; their only child, the son Vsevolod, was born in 1917, but died in 1920. Nina traced the 1916 painting To the Unknown Voice to Kandinsky's first phone call with her.

After the Russian Revolution , tsarist censorship was abolished and artists in Russia initially had new freedoms. When these were to be restricted by the communist regime, Wassily Kandinsky had already received an invitation from Walter Gropius to work at the Bauhaus in Weimar . The couple arrived in Berlin on December 24, 1921, with an exit permit from the Soviet government and little luggage . In June 1922 they moved to Weimar, where Kandinsky began teaching at the Bauhaus. After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau , they were neighbors of the Klee family in the Meisterhaussiedlung .

In spring 1928 they received German citizenship. When the Bauhaus had to close for political reasons, they went to Berlin with Mies van der Rohe in 1932 . After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, they emigrated to France and from 1934 lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine . They tried to help former Bauhaus members to flee Europe; In 1939 they received French citizenship. During the German occupation of France in 1940 , they fled to Cauterets in the Pyrenees and returned to Paris at the end of August. They turned down Varian Fry's offer to emigrate to the USA via Marseille.

Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944, having appointed Nina Kandinsky as sole heir. They were not separated a day in the 27 years. Nina Kandinsky took care of the estate from then on and organized a large part of the later exhibitions. In 1946 she founded the Prix ​​Kandinsky to promote young talent, which was awarded until 1961. Nina Kandinsky influenced the selection of the jury and the award of prizes. When the prices for Kandinsky's paintings rose on the art market in the 1950s, she led a luxurious life financed from the sale of paintings. During this time she negotiated with Münter about the pictures that had remained in Munich since 1915; the two only reached an agreement in 1957.

In 1958 Lothar-Günther Buchheim published a book on the Der Blaue Reiter editorial group, with Wassily Kandinsky at its center. Nina followed the genesis of the book with goodwill while reading the proofs and assessing the selection of images. However, since the relationship between Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, who had given Kandinsky a promise to marry, was also presented in the book, quoting from another work , Nina Kandinsky tried to prevent the already published book from being further distributed. The dispute, apostrophized by the press as the “widow's curse”, was conducted as a copyright lawsuit over the reproductions of 69 Kandinsky pictures presented in the illustrated book, which Nina had negotiated with the BGH and which was decided in 1973: The illustrated book was pulped and Buchheim had to pay compensation. As a further leverage, Nina refused to release pictures for exhibitions in Germany, unless the exhibition organizers supported her in the dispute.

In 1976 she published her memoirs under the title Kandinsky und ich , they first appeared in German; Werner Krüger had compiled the text from tape recordings.

In her will, Nina Kandinsky ensured that the main estate is managed by the Wassily Kandinsky Foundation in the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, after she had already given the museum thirty paintings.

In September 1980, Nina Kandinsky was the victim of a robbery and murder in her “Esmeralda” chalet in Gstaad . The murder remained unsolved, as the Swiss Confederation recalled 25 years later . Nina Kandinsky, like Wassily, was buried on the Cimetière nouveau de Neuilly-sur-Seine . In contrast to Wassily Kandinsky's life data, the shared tombstone does not bear that of his wife Nina.

Fonts

  • Kandinsky and me . With the collaboration of Werner Krüger. Kindler, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-463-00678-2 ; as paperback: Droemer Knaur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-426-72226-7 .
  • Kandinsky as he lives , in: Hommage à Wassily Kandinsky . Translation Barbara Lindemann. Ebeling, Wiesbaden 1976, pp. 95-100

literature

  • Eckhard Neumann (ed.): Bauhaus and Bauhäusler. Memories and confessions. expanded new edition 1985 / 5th edition, DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-1673-9 , pp. 232–239. (Interview)
  • Wolfgang Sauré: Visiting Nina Kandinsky in Paris. In: Weltkunst , born 1975, p. 1306.
  • Annegret Hoberg : Stations of Life , in: Helmut Friedel, Annegret Hoberg: Kandinsky . Munich: Prestel, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7913-4001-2 , p. 277

Web links

Commons : Nina Kandinsky  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There are different spellings of names and transcriptions, here after Wassily Kandinsky. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  2. ↑ a b c d Eckhard Neumann: Bauhaus and Bauhäusler , 1996, p. 232 f.
  3. ↑ a b Klaus von Beyme : The Age of the Avant-garde: Art and Society 1905–1955 . Beck, Munich 2005, pp. 145 f.
  4. ^ Will Grohmann : Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work . DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1958, p. 171
  5. ↑ Wassily Kandinsky. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  6. ^ Fabrice Hergott: Wassily Kandinsky - Life and Work , in: Götz Adriani : Kandinsky: Major works from the Center Georges Pompidou Paris; Kunsthalle Tübingen, April 2 to June 27, 1999 . DuMont, Cologne 1999, pp. 8-28
  7. ^ Lothar-Günther Buchheim: The "Blue Rider" and the "New Munich Artists' Association" . Buchheim, Feldafing 1959
  8. ↑ Kandinsky: Bought rings? In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1960 ( online ).
  9. ↑ a b c Decision in the dispute Kandinsky-Buchheim: Der Witwe Fluch , in: Die Zeit , July 30, 1971
  10. ↑ Werner Krüger , at DNB
  11. ^ Christian Derouet: Knappheit und Fülle , in: Götz Adriani : Kandinsky: Major works from the Center Georges Pompidou Paris; Kunsthalle Tübingen, April 2 to June 27, 1999 . DuMont, Cologne 1999, pp. 158-172
  12. ^ Nina Kandinsky . In: Der Spiegel . No.  37 , 1980 ( online ).
  13. ↑ Walter Däpp: The murder in the Gstaad Nobel Chalet: the painter widow Nina Kandinsky was murdered in Gstaad over 25 years ago - the case, like many others, is still unresolved in: Der Bund , February 7, 2006, p. 19
  14. ↑ Kandinsky's tombstone on Find a Grave
personal data
SURNAME Kandinsky, Nina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andreevskaja, Nina Nikolajewna (maiden name according to DHM); Andrejewskaja, Nina Nikolajewna (birth name according to Wikipedia naming conventions in Cyrillic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-German-French wife of Wassily Kandinsky
DATE OF BIRTH around 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH 2nd September 1980
Place of death Gstaad , Switzerland