Kandinsky titled canvases Compositions and Improvisations, wrote in Concerning the Spiritual in Art about tones of color, and described hearing instruments in hues, cello as dark blue in his accounts. A performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin, where he reported seeing the music, features in his own origin story of abstraction.
Whether Kandinsky was formally a synesthete is debated; the historical testimony is suggestive rather than clinical. What is documented is the program: painting aspiring to music’s condition, form and color as chords.
His stage work The Yellow Sound scripted color, light, and music as equal actors, and his writing remains the most quoted theory in visual music’s canon. Our synesthete profiles cover the evidence in detail.