Wassily Kandinsky has the peculiar ability to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Individual works by this seminal early 20th century painter pop up all over the place: in exhibitions on Expressionism; Modernism; the Blue Rider movement; Russian/German/French art (he switched nationality three times). And his influence on the entire modern history of painting — from Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to Mark Rothko — is undeniable. But major solo retrospectives of Kandinsky's most celebrated paintings are rare — there haven't been any such recent shows in Paris or New York City, for example.

In London, too, Kandinsky was art's invisible man. Tate Modern's "Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction" puts an end to that

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) obscurity, bringing together 78 works that trace the artist's journey from figurative landscape painter to master of abstract composition. Most of the exhibition moves to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, in October.

One of the reasons why Kandinsky has not had the headline treatment he deserves is that many of his paintings were for decades behind the Iron Curtain — in Moscow's Tretyakov gallery, and the State Hermitage in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Many others are scattered around the globe: in New York City's Guggenheim Museum, the Pompidou Center in Paris and Munich's Lenbachhaus, for example. "It was like a Rubik's cube, trying to piece this together," says Sean Rainbird, curator of the show. During selection, "I felt like all my Christmases had come at once. Normally you're only allowed one or two."

As the exhibit's title indicates, Kandinsky, like most painters of his era, did not start off as an abstract colorist. His earliest painting in the show, Arab City (1905), is a Middle Eastern cityscape in sandy white and muted brown. By this time Kandinsky, born in Moscow in 1866, had been painting for about 10 years, after dropping a promising career as a law professor to join a Munich art school at age 30. A viewing of Monet's Haystacks inspired the move: for the first time, "painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendor," Kandinsky explained. He never lost this fascination with fairy tales and folklore and their capacity for innocent, undisguised expression. Kandinsky's fascination with the emotional resonance of color, for instance, is first glimpsed in Song (1906), a figurative depiction of a Russian ditty that Kandinsky painted while homesick in Germany. "In my use of line and distribution of colored dots I was trying to express the musical side of Russia," he said.

Rainbow

Driven by a desire to create art that sang like music, Kandinsky set off in search of inspiration. He found it in 1904 in Murnau, the picturesque Bavarian town he later returned to with his then lover, the artist Gabriele Münter. In just two years, between 1908-10, Kandinsky painted some 120 landscapes there, 10 of which hang in the Tate Modern exhibition.

Unlike his more delicate early painting, the oils of the Murnau landscapes appear more vigorous. Wedges of jewel-like color jam together. Mountains, castles and boats remain recognizable, but begin to morph into triangles, squares and sweeping curves. The progression is perhaps best appreciated in Painting with Houses (1909). The work divides into two distinct halves: a figurative hill with a rainbow row of colorful houses tracks up the center of the canvas, but the perspective distorts to childlike proportions.

The centerpieces of the exhibit are Composition VI, Kandinsky's phenomenal abstract rendering of the Biblical flood, and Composition VII (both 1913), an apocalyptic allusion to Judgment Day, resurrection and Paradise. In these images, both billboard-size and bursting with color, Kandinsky perfected his vision of a purely abstract art. Though both were painted in the same year, they were more than 18 months in development. For Composition VII Kandinsky made more than 30 preliminary studies, but when he came to the final canvas, he completed the epic enigma in just three days. Tate Modern opens up more whitewashed gallery space than ever before to accommodate Kandinsky (and devotes an entire wall to Composition VI). Even so, the enveloping power of these two works, if studied too closely, can make you gasp for air.

The speed with which Kandinsky journeyed from sunny Murnau to these psychologically darker works is remarkable. Although the earlier landscapes look rudimentary in comparison, there's barely three years between the two. But those years, leading up to World War I, were intense, foreboding and, perhaps for exactly this reason, prolific years for the artist. "When the outer supports threaten to fall, man turns his gaze from externals in on to himself," wrote Kandinsky in his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912).

TURMOIL

Redefining his mission to release a spiritual dimension to painting, he separated his own work into three categories: "Impressions" were observations of the natural world; "Improvisations" were spontaneous expressions of mood or feeling; but the "Compositions," while also inner visions, were so intricately structured they were analogous to symphonies (soon after this, Kandinsky struck up a friendship with the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg, whose musical theories he admired). Grand spiritual works called for grand spiritual themes, hence Kandinsky's predilection for apocalyptic angels and horsemen.

Kandinsky, dubbed an enemy alien, was kicked out of Germany during the war, and the move back to Moscow interrupted his painting for some years — not least because the 1917 Revolution left him virtually penniless. When he eventually returned to the easel, the vivid colors had faded into splashes against grubby white and gray backdrops. The works remain emotive, but they convey a palpable sense of turmoil.

It's almost a relief when Kandinsky returns to color-filled form in the final room of the Tate show, representing the period just before he joined Germany's Bauhaus school. Circles on Black (1921) hints at the geometric motifs that would preoccupy Kandinsky later in his career. By the time he died in France in 1944, Kandinsky had been rejected by the Russians and denounced as degenerate by the Nazis, but celebrated in London and New York City. Battling through illness, he painted until just a few months before his death. Generations of artists inspired by Kandinsky's emotional rendering of color and mastery of abstract expression remain delighted he pursued that calling. By assembling such a rare collection, this exhibition may yet inspire another generation.

• JESSICA CARSEN / London
• A rare exhibition of works by Kandinsky brings color to London