'Real joy' to be had viewing Kandinsky's art in Sydney

The Kandinsky show unveiled at the Art Gallery of NSW on Friday will give people who have only seen his paintings in books or on screens, a chance to contemplate the real thing.

More than 50 works have been lent to the Sydney gallery from New York's Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, where they are considered among the treasures of its important collection.

"We see this as a huge opportunity for a whole new generation of visitors to experience Kandinsky in Australia," gallery director Michael Brand told reporters.

Kandinsky with his painting 'Dominant curve (Courbe dominante)', Paris 1936.

Born in Moscow, Kandinsky was one of the most influential European modernists, and his life and career played out against the social and political upheavals of the early 20th century.

Yet his paintings have a deep sense of hope and resilience, according to Guggenheim curator Megan Fontanella, who said the artworks reward those who slow down to take a long look.

"I think there's a real joy to be had in the viewing experience," she told AAP.

"It's an embarrassment of riches, there are so many wonderful canvases."

Some highlights include his early masterpiece Blue Mountain (1908-09), the more abstract Dominant Curve (1936) and Composition 8 (1923), the last of which Kandinsky regarded as the high point of his postwar art.

Unpacking the paintings in Sydney, Fontanella kept finding they still had new things to say - a reminder of how revolutionary they were a century ago.

Kandinsky was among the foremost artists experimenting with the radical new language of abstraction, she explained, but he would often provide the suggestion of figurative elements for viewers to hold on to.

The sheer range of paintings on show mean it's possible to track the development of his investigations in paint throughout his life.

More than 40 years have passed since the last exhibition in Australia dedicated to Kandinsky's work.

The highly coloured figures and landscapes of his earlier works give way to a period of gestural expression, and then to luminous flat planes of colour, with abstract forms dancing across them.

Kandinsky and his contemporaries developed a whole new geometric language, from biomorphic forms - like cells under a microscope - to the precisely rendered lines and shapes he is perhaps best known for.

But this was not merely formal experimentation: Kandinsky was deeply interested in spiritualism throughout his life and committed to investigating the psychological and transcendent impacts of colour.

He formed the influential Der Blaue Reiter with fellow painter Franz Marc in 1912, and in 1922 began teaching at the Bauhaus.

After the art school was closed down by the Nazis he moved to France: in 1937 more than 50 of his works were designated degenerate art and confiscated.

Towards the end of his life he painted precisely rendered abstract shapes on small wooden boards: World War II meant there was no canvas left to paint on.

Kandinsky was not only a painter but a printmaker, a poet and a theoretician; above all he was a keen observer.

"He's at the forefront, innovating and experimenting, but he's also looking all around him," Fontanella said.

Kandinsky is part of the Sydney International Art Series and opens at the Art Gallery of NSW on Saturday. The exhibition runs until March 10, 2024.