text= Born in Moscow Kandinsky was a talented child and learned the piano and cello at an early age. The influence of music in his paintings cannot be overstated, down to the names of his paintings Improvisations, Impressions, and Compositions

Until about 1920, he used bright, pure colors and free, spontaneous line and form. Later he began to paint carefully calculated compositions of geometric shapes. He maintained that the observer of his paintings ought to look at them as representation of mood rather than objects.

The term "Composition" can imply a metaphor with music. Kandinsky was fascinated by music's emotional power. Because music expresses itself through sound and time, it allows the listener a freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response that is not based on the literal or the descriptive, but rather on the abstract quality that painting, still dependent on representing the visible world, could not provide.

Kandinsky's special understanding of the affinities between painting and music are expressed in a number of texts.  Music can respond and appeal directly to the artist's "internal element" and express spiritual values, thus for Kandinsky it is a more advanced art. In his writings Kandinsky emphasizes this superiority in advancing toward what he calls the epoch of the great spiritual.

His creative process deeply involved the experience of music and its embodiment in a pictorial language. "The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colors in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me. I did not dare use the expression that Wagnet had painted 'my hour' musically."

It was at this special moment that Kandinsky realized the tremendous power that art could exert over the spectator and that painting could develop powers equivalent to those of music.  His creative process stands out as a bridge successfully linking sounds and music into a pictorial space.