Chess from American maple "Abstractions of Kandinsky"

"Karpov Chess" company continues to produce sets dedicated to outstanding masters of art of the twentieth century. """"We are pleased to present the set of "Kandinsky Abstractions", part of the series "Three whales of the Russian avant-garde".

He was an artist of extremely unusual creative destiny. He became an outstanding avant-garde artist and one of the founders of non-objective art. According to art historians, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was Kandinsky and Malevich who laid the foundations of modern art. Malevich's abstraction is geometric, while Kandinsky's is organic. And if in the last century it was the abstractions discovered by Malevich that became dominant in various forms of art, then now, in the 21st century, perhaps the time has come for Kandinsky's organic abstractions.
The artist received an excellent law degree at Moscow University and only after the age of 30 began systematically studying painting. It was probably his studies in science that helped him to theoretically substantiate his painting abstractionist experiments. According to one of the family legends, among his ancestors were the Mansi princes and Siberian bandits. Perhaps that is why the artist's art became robberly bold, overturning all possible foundations and patterns, and made him a genuine "prince of painting."

Traditionally, the noble American maple wood has served as the material for the board and the set pieces.
The use of polyurethane enamels and acrylic varnish made it possible to bring the colors as close as possible to the Kandinsky palette.

Pawns represent the development of ascending geometric curves, with a systematic decrease in pressure and a corresponding increasing upward tension. This symbolizes the pawn's vertical movement and at the same time its potential desire to become a queen. Rooks are a complex combination of points and lines in space, forming circles and rectangular elements of the so-called "polylines", which are combined geometrically. The horses became shapes resembling undulating curves, meaning, according to Kandinsky's theory, elevation.
Indeed, which other chess piece is comparable to a knight in terms of surprise attacks on the opponent?
The elephant figures consist of two triangular shapes, embodying the idea of "warm peace" in relation to the main plane.

It kind of symbolizes the function of those legendary elephants, which, according to ancient beliefs, hold the earth. And in a chess game, it is often these pieces that create a calm and confident defense for the player.

The queen is formed from two circles transformed into balls. According to Kandinsky, this is both the least and the most stable shape of the plane. This dualism is emphasized by the construction of our figure from two balls. The king at the top is a simple straight line that has deviated from its path due to lateral pressure and is striving for self-completion. This is very similar to the function of the king in chess, when he can be one of all the pieces remaining on the board and in such cases the game is really nearing completion. The combination with a cylindrical base formed by dots and planes allows you to add calmness and confidence to this composition. After all, this is the function of this chess piece.: it is the most important one, without it the continuation of the party is simply unthinkable and at the same time weak, in need of constant protection, becoming the main object of the enemy's influence.
The figures are colored yellow and purple. According to Kandinsky, yellow and blue are the most antagonistic in terms of color. We allowed ourselves to replace blue with purple, which is obtained by adding red to blue, which is also one of the main colors according to the artist's theory. This further enhanced the contrast of the figures, because purple color dominates many of Kandinsky's works, one of his productions is even called "Purple Curtain".

The red inserts of dynamic lines on the main ones symbolize strength and energy, fanfare sounds with the sound of a trumpet calling for the overthrow of established dogmas in art and at the same time for the beginning of a chess game.

The supports of the figures are made in the form of white circles. A circle, according to Kandinsky, as we already know, is one of the forms of a plane formed by a curve that has come to its starting point. Its white color symbolizes both the purity of the white canvas at the beginning of the artist's work, and an allusion to the white snow of the Russian winter.
The board for this set can be said to have been designed by Kandinsky himself. It is based on his 1937 work "Thirty" from the Museum of Modern Art. Georges Pompidou. Its elements transformed into chess squares, and a significant fragment, repeated four times, formed the plane of the chessboard. According to some researchers, it is this painting of the late period of the artist's work that best corresponds to the modern rhythm of life. It is no coincidence that Kandinsky turned to a laconic black-and-white scale. After all, it was precisely these two colors that his teacher F. Shtuk limited the future master when performing educational tasks, forcing him to work closely on the shape of the objects depicted.
Subsequently, in his work "spiritual in Art," Kandinsky contrasted these colors, calling black a symbol of death, and white a symbol of birth.

So, "Karpov Chess" company presents another set from the project "Gallery of Geniuses. "Russian Century XX" provides a unique opportunity to play a game with figures based on the work of one of the greatest and most unusual Russian artists. We are conducting a creative dialogue with the immortal representatives of the Russian avant-garde, transforming and developing their creative ideas that defined their time in art.
The set is accompanied by a quality certificate with a hologram and an authentic autograph of the sixteen-time world chess champion Anatoly Karpov.