Due to the current coronavirus situation this meeting is cancelled.
However, we are working with the lecturer to produce an on-line version of her presentation which will be made available to Arts Society Worcester members.
One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between colour and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience. In this lecture we will look at paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and the origins of his first abstractions, as well as other Russian artists, who developed non-objective art in Russia.
Natalia Murray was born in St Petersburg where she gained BA and MA in Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts before taking the PhD course at the Hermitage Museum (conducting research on the XVII century Dutch paintings and British reproductive mezzotint engravings of XVII-XIX centuries, and their connection with the development of artistic tastes in Britain). In 2015 she was awarded PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Her most recent book Art for the Workers. Proletarian Art and Festive Decorations of Petrograd. 1917-1920 was published by ‘Brill’ in May 2018. At present she is a visiting lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art and a senior freelance curator. In 2017 she curated a major exhibition Revolution. Russian Art. 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and is currently working on an exhibition of Malevich and Kandinsky in Paris.
Over the last five years she has taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art Summer and Spring School and conducted an evening lecture course Showcasing Art History, presented study days and public lectures at the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, V&A, Art Fund and Chelsea Art Club .