The Centre Pompidou and the Musée de la musique-Philharmonie de Paris are joining forces to design and produce a major exhibition on the musical imagination in the work of Vassily Kandinsky. Presented at the Philharmonie de Paris from October 14, 2025, to February 1, 2026, this exhibition brings together nearly 200 works by the master, along with items from his studio (scores, records, books, tools, etc.), all of which highlight the fundamental role of music in his daily life, his vocation as a painter, and the evolution of his practice toward abstraction.
No previous exhibition has addressed this subject in its entirety, or especially repositioned the painter's production—from Russian landscapes to Bauhaus works—within the musical ferment of his time. It is undeniable that the experiments of Alexander Scriabin, Thomas von Hartmann, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern define the essential listening horizon of modernity and pictorial abstraction. From the "Wagnerian shock" Kandinsky experienced in 1896 during a performance of Lohengrin in Moscow to his discovery of Schoenberg's atonal works in 1911 in Munich, and from his attempts at a new form of "total art" on stage to the teaching at the Bauhaus, music is an indispensable key to appreciating the work of the Russian artist.
The exhibition catalog gathers texts from numerous French and international specialists, offering a new perspective on the relationship between painting and music during the first half of the 20th century.
Genre: Art book, Illustrated
Format: Hardcover
Dimensions: 23 x 31 cm
Pages: 240
ISBN: 978-2-38654-029-5