Today I invite you to take a fresh look at one of the most famous Russian artists - Wassily Kandinsky (the photo at the beginning of the text is taken from Wikipedia). My reading of his biography and work will follow three milestones - the biographical aspect, creativity, cultural background. And if Dostoevsky is called the first psychoanalytic writer, then in my eyes, among artists, it was Kandinsky who came closest to understanding the unconscious. The Hermitage is currently hosting the exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde. Art for a new world." The central place is occupied by paintings by Malevich and Kandinsky. Those familiar with psychoanalytic theory will notice that artists communicate directly with the viewer’s unconscious. They were both innovators and creators of something that had never existed before. And the works of both are difficult to comprehend, interesting to analyze, and rich in discoveries. When you look at their paintings, you get the feeling of a dialogue, and not just contemplation and comprehension. For some time I decided which of them I wanted to reflect on with you and ultimately chose Kandinsky to write a series of articles as the founder of non-objective painting, which, in my opinion, has even more in common with the human psyche directly, while the work of Malevich correlates with mathematics, precisely verified and measurable structures. Kandinsky's art direction relates to organic abstraction, his task was to create order out of chaos, moreover, cosmic chaos, by connecting elements with bright fragments - lines, spots (yes, you probably noticed some similarity with modern feature films in a space style with colorful colors palette). Wassily Kandinsky was born on December 16, 1866 in Moscow into a wealthy family of a successful commercial figure. His relatives were extremely talented, and the family on his father’s side considered themselves descendants of the rulers of the Kondinsky principality, and on his mother’s side they were Baltic Germans. Vasily Vasilyevich’s character was distinguished by contradictions (which for me personally is always a trait of the most interesting personalities!) - noticeable emotionality coexists with pedantry. When little Vasily was 5 years old, the family moved to Odessa due to the deterioration of his father’s health, and in the same city his parents divorced. We can only speculate about the impact of parental divorce on a boy during a sensitive period when, according to psychoanalytic developmental theory, the importance of identifying with the father and establishing an attachment to a male authority figure is of great importance. One way or another, Odessa forever remained one of the artist’s favorite places and was reflected in his work. Little Vasily’s education was given a lot of attention; after his parents’ divorce, his aunt was involved in his upbringing, who encouraged the boy to study music and painting; he was instilled with a love of art, which helped lay the necessary foundation for the intellectual and comprehensive development of his personality (take your children to the museum on the weekend 😁). In his young years, Vasily Vasilyevich was attracted by many different areas of activity; he had a truly wide range of interests. If we look into the historical context of Russian culture in that period, we can notice several brilliant discoveries: in the period 1866-1868. Dostoevsky’s novels “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, and Sechenov’s work “Reflexes of the Brain” were published. What else is important in the historical context is the student unrest in St. Petersburg in 1869. There is a point of view that one of the events that directly influenced the revolution of 1917 and anticipated it was student unrest. Since avant-garde (originally the word “avant-garde” was a military term) in Russia has a direct connection with the events of 1917, they are of key importance when considering the work of artists belonging to this movement. The Kandinsky family traveled a lot, which could not but affect the scope of the future artist’s horizons. Parents saw Vasily as a lawyer,.