Wassily Kandinsky's Symphony of Colors

For Wassily Kandinsky, music and color were inseparably intertwined. The Russian painter, often credited as a pioneer of abstract art, experienced a rare neurological phenomenon called synesthesia, in which one sense triggers another. For Kandinsky, hearing music would conjure vivid colors, while colors themselves could evoke the sense of sound. He once reflected, “The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.”