Newswise — A doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago has received a Fulbright fellowship to research and catalog thousands of previously unknown documents relating to the early life of Russian abstract painter Vasily Kandinsky in Odessa, Ukraine.
UIC art history student Aleksander Najda said he discovered the archive while visiting the deputy head of the Odessa Fine Art Museum, Vitaly Abramov. Abramov had spent 30 years building an archive on Kandinsky's life from ages 5 through 20, when the artist lived primarily in Odessa. The materials have never been analyzed, published or computerized because of the cost, Najda said.
"This tiny office was filled with fragile papers," he said. "Mr. Abramov had government permission to do his research, and he found documents in the museum, city archives, the public library, private collections and churches. The churches would let him take anything because they were afraid of the government."
One church had papers detailing what Najda considers a key to Kandinsky's character: the decree allowing his mother to divorce his father, a shocking action among the Russian Orthodox in the 1870s.
"Kandinsky was secretive about his childhood. He wouldn't admit to any influence from Odessa, which he considered uncultured," Najda said. "He was always on the run from his past. I know when he lied, made things up, was pretentious about his image. He misdated his break from figurative to abstract art to make it look like he broke through earlier. He called himself the father of abstract art."
Najda, a native of Poland, has earned bachelor's and master's degrees at UIC since 2000, but began studying Kandinsky much earlier.
"I have been passionate about Kandinsky from my childhood," Najda said. "His work, in many respects, is like children's drawings. Many of his compositions were triggered by analysis of children's watercolors."
Najda plans to establish a nonprofit organization to continue his research beyond the term of his Fulbright Fellowship.
The U.S. Fulbright Fellowship Program of the U.S. Department of State funds advanced students' self-designed research overseas. Fulbright fellowships are designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
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