His Paintings Were Deemed “Degenerate” by The Nazis

The Nazi Party held two art exhibitions in Munich in July 1937, four years after taking power. The Great German Art Show was the first, and the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition was the second. Wassily Kandinsky's paintings were among the 650 works in the Degenerate Art show. 57 of his pieces had already been confiscated from the nation's museums by the Nazi Party. Apart from Kandinsky, the exhibition featured works by Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, and Emil Nolde, among other modern art greats. The art was divided into rooms based on categories such as blasphemous art, Jewish art, and communist art. The abstract works of Kandinsky found their way into "the insanity chamber."

"In the paintings and sketches of this chamber of horrors, there is no telling what was in the twisted brains of individuals who wielded the brush or the pencil," the exhibition handbook stated. The Nazis later burnt some of the art, including the first three paintings in Kandinsky's Composition series.