Wassily Kandinskys frühe Bühnenkompositionen

In his synthetic stage art known as “stage composition” Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) revealed his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. This formed the foundation of his world view which saw the artist in a missionary role. In the “stage composition” he experimented with possibilities of portraying the mental realm on the stage and sought an appropriate language of form and color. This study is the first to present a complete interpretation of the four early stage compositions by means of an interdisciplinary body and movement analysis conducted from the perspectives of theatre studies and iconography. It explains the tetralogy as a precursor to ‘The Blue Rider’, Kandinsky’s self-portrait.