Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Kandinsky was born in Moscow but spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose law and economics. Although quite successful in his profession-he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat-he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. Being in conflict with official theories on art, he returned to Germany in 1921. There he was a teacher at the Bauhaus from 1922 until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. At that time he moved to France. He lived the rest of his life there, becoming a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.