Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (December 16 [O.S. December 4] 1866 – December 13, 1944) is a Russian painter and art theorist.

Kandinsky is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art.

Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spends his childhood in Odessa (today Ukraine), where he graduates at Grekov Odessa Art school.

He enrolls at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics.

Successful in his profession—he is offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia)—Kandinsky begins painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of thirty.

In 1896, Kandinsky settles in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts.

He returns to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of the Great War.

Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting.

However,  opportunities beckon in Germany, to which he returns in 1920.

There he teaches at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis close it in 1933.

He then moves to France, where he lives for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art.

He dies in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.