Kandinsky is often credited with creating the first purely abstract works. While Wassily Kandinsky, born in 1866, began exploring abstract painting in the 1910s, Jackson Pollock, born in 1912, did not start his foray into abstract expressionism until the 1940s. Kandinsky's first abstract watercolor, painted in 1910, is considered one of the first works of abstract art. Therefore, Kandinsky engaged with abstract expressionism before Pollock.