Wassily Kandinsky, 16/12/1866, LT: 03:29:40, GMT: 00:29:40, Moscow
Born on 4 December in Moscow according to the old Julian calendar, in the early morning at 03:29:40 local time, Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky's birth date is 16 December by the Gregorian calendar we have been using since 1582 in Western Europe, so that is the date you will see in the chart above. His forename is usually given the German spelling because he studied art, did much of his painting, published and lectured in Germany until the rise of the Nazis led to the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933.
A stellium of Sun, Mercury and Venus in Sagittarius with a Libran Ascendant, Moon and Neptune in Aries, and Mars and Uranus in the 9th house inform us he was a man of intellect, passion, innovation, sensitivity and wide-ranging talent. There are cardinal, fixed and mutable aspect patterns in his chart but the dominant triangle in close aspects from Moon in Aries in the 6th to Uranus in Cancer in the 9th to Mercury in Sagittarius in the 2nd stands out strongly and offers the master key to his character and his life.
Kandinsky learned to play the piano and cello as a child and, always sensitive to colour, he started painting in oils in his teens, but he chose to study law and political economy at university and became a lecturer in jurisprudence. We can relate this choice of career to Jupiter in Aquarius forming one corner of a righteousness rectangle at the base of his chart. That might have looked like a safe career that concerned itself with important issues of right and wrong and justice, but in 1896 Kandinsky turned down a professorship in Estonia, in favour of studying art in Munich.
He attributed this change of direction to an exhibition of Impressionist art in Moscow, in 1895, and, in particular, to Monet's Haystack where he first perceived the dematerialisation of an object. There are many signs of this change of focus in his astrological chart. At age 30 his Age Point entered Aries on the cusp of the 6th house, soon to conjunct Moon and Neptune in this expressionist fire sign, and moved towards the encounter axis in the middle of house 6. These were years of study under established artists, formation of new progressive associations and then some extensive travel. You can sense the tension and impatience of Moon in Aries square Uranus in Cancer, eager to move forward and be innovative but needing more experience and wider exposure before he could forge his own personal style.
In 1911, when he published 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art', Kandinsky's Age Point in the middle of house 8 formed an opposition to Mercury in Sagittarius and a semi-sextile to Uranus in Cancer, activating the quincunx from Uranus to Mercury to form an irritation triangle. This was a period of tremendous activity when Kandinsky was producing abstract expressionist paintings in bright colours and editing an almanac.
At the cusp of the 9th house, in 1914, Kandinsky had to return to Russia at the start of the First World War and at the cusp of the 10th, in 1920, he became a Professor at Moscow University, founding the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences the following year. But with the imposition of social realism in Moscow Kandinsky, an individualist from a wealthy family, returned to Germany where he taught at the Bauhaus from 1922-33 and then moved to France. His later works are mostly painted in more muted colours than the exuberant paintings to 1914. In his Bauhaus period - which roughly corresponds to the upper side of the righteousness rectangle from Mars to Node - there is more focus on geometric forms.
In his final years he blended the intuitive images of his earlier period with geometric forms. He died in 1944 when his Age Point reached unaspected Saturn on the cusp of the 2nd house.
The above chart was produced on AstroCora. Megastar makes a half hour adjustment to the difference between Moscow time and GMT in 1866. This does not alter the shape of the chart but it brings AS to 1 degree of Scorpio, Moon in Aries to the stress position before the 6th house and creates a half-way opposition from Saturn to Pluto.
Sue Lewis Dip. API, D.F. Astrol.S
Click here for page of Kandinsky's paintings
For any enquiries contact
The Astrological Psychology Association directly on
Tel: +44 (0)1479 831374 or
