SOURCE: "Esthetic Theories of Wassily Kandinsky," in German Expressionist Painting, University of California Press, 1957, pp. 223-33.

In the following essay, Selz delineates the major themes of Kandinsky's theoretical writings, in particular his Concerning the Spiritual in Art and "Über die Formfrage. "

The artistic purpose of the Blaue Reiter movement was most thoroughly articulated in Kandinsky's theoretical writings, especially the two essays, Concerning the Spiritual in Art and "Über die Formfrage," published in Der Blaue Reiter. Although these essays, which both appeared in 1912,¹ are largely based on earlier esthetic theory, they constitute almost a programmatic manifesto for the expressionist generation:

If Der Blaue Reiter, published by R. Piper, is taken together with Kandinsky's supplement, Das Geistige in der Kunst, as a unity, then this double volume is just as much the book of the pre-war years, as Hildebrand's Problem der Form was the book of the turn of the...