Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance A Cultural History of Russia. New York: Picador, 2003.
Peg Weiss. Kandinsky and Old Russia. The Artist as Ethnographer and Shaman. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995.
Author: Stephen Sheehi
Vasily Kandinsky started his rise to fame as an abstract painter with the “Jack of Diamonds” exhibition sponsored by Nikolai Riabushinsky, a vigorous patron of young brilliant artists. Kandinsky was part of the group of artists, who “declared a war on the realist tradition and shocked the public with their art” (Figes, 212).