In the Paint Composition Viii Squares and Rectangles of Theo Van Doesburg Is That a Abstract Art

Black Abstraction (1927)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
By Georgia O'Keeffe.
A wonderful autobiographical
example of biomorphic brainchild.

Composition With Blue And Yellow.
(1932) Piet Mondrian.
Philadelphia Museum Of Art.
Neo-Plasticism/De Stijl.

WHAT IS ART?
For an guide to the aesthetic and
classification problems apropos
fine/decorative/applied arts, see:
Art Definition, Meaning.

Definition and Pregnant

The term 'abstruse fine art' - likewise called "non-objective art", "non-figurative", "non-representational", "geometric brainchild", or "concrete art" - is a rather vague umbrella term for any painting or sculpture which does not portray recognizable objects or scenes. However, as we shall run into, in that location is no clear consensus on the definition, types or aesthetic significance of abstruse art. Picasso idea that there was no such affair, while some fine art critics take the view that all art is abstruse - because, for case, no painting can hope to be more a crude summary (brainchild) of what the painter sees. Even mainstream commentators sometimes disagree over whether a canvas should be labelled "expressionist" or "abstract" - have for instance the watercolour Ship on Fire (1830, Tate), and the oil painting Snow Storm - Steam Boat off a Harbour'southward Mouth (1842, Tate), both past JMW Turner (1775-1851). A similar example is Water-Lilies (1916-twenty, National Gallery, London) by Claude Monet (1840-1926). Too, there is a sliding calibration of brainchild: from semi-abstruse to wholly abstruse. And then even though the theory is relatively articulate - abstract fine art is detached from reality - the practical chore of separating abstract from non-abstract can exist much more than problematical.

What is the Idea Behind Abstract Art?

The basic premise of brainchild - incidentally, a key issue of aesthetics - is that the formal qualities of a painting (or sculpture) are just as important (if not more so) than its representational qualities.

Allow's start with a very simple illustration. A motion picture may comprise a very bad drawing of a man, just if its colours are very beautiful, it may all the same strike usa as being a beautiful film. This shows how a formal quality (colour) can override a representational ane (cartoon).

On the other manus, a photorealist painting of a terraced firm may demonstrate exquisite representationalism, but the subject area matter, colour scheme and general composition may be totally deadening.

The philosophical justification for affectionate the value of a work of art's formal qualities stems from Plato's statement that:

"straight lines and circles are... non but beautiful... only eternally and admittedly cute."

In essence, Plato means that non-naturalistic images (circles, squares, triangles so on) possess an accented, unchanging beauty. Thus a painting can be appreciated for its line and colour solitary - it doesn't need to draw a natural object or scene. The French painter, lithographer and art theorist Maurice Denis (1870-1943) was getting at the aforementioned thing when he wrote: "Call up that a moving-picture show - earlier beingness a war horse or a nude adult female... is substantially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order."

Some abstract artists explain themselves past saying that they desire to create the visual equivalent of a slice of music, which tin can be appreciated purely for itself, without having to ask the question "what is this painting of?" Whistler, for case, used to give some of his paintings musical titles similar Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea (1871, Tate Collection). (See besides: Fine art Evaluation: How to Capeesh Art.)

Types of Abstract Art

To continue things simple, we can divide abstract art into six basic types:

• Curvilinear
• Color-Related or Low-cal-Related
• Geometric
• Emotional or Intuitional
• Gestural
• Minimalist

Some of these types are less abstract than others, but all are concerned with separating fine art from reality.

Curvilinear Abstract Art

This blazon of curvilinear brainchild is strongly associated with Celtic Art, which employed a range of abstract motifs including knots (viii bones types), interlace patterns, and spirals (including the triskele, or the triskelion). These motifs were not original to the Celts - many other early cultures had been utilizing these Celtic designs for centuries: see for example the spiral engravings at the Neolithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange in Co Meath, created some 2000 years before the advent of the Celts. Nevertheless, it is off-white to say that Celtic designers breathed new life into these patterns, making them much more intricate and sophisticated in the process. These patterns later on re-emerged every bit decorative elements in early on illuminated manuscripts (c.600-1000 CE). Later they returned during the 19th century Celtic Revival Motion, and the influential 20th century Art Nouveau motility: notably in volume-covers, cloth, wallpaper and chintz designs by the likes of William Morris (1834-96) and Arthur Mackmurdo (1851-1942). Curvilinear brainchild is also exemplified by the "infinite pattern", a widespread feature of Islamic Fine art.

Colour-Related or Light-Related Abstract Art

This type is exemplified in works by Turner and Monet, that use colour (or light) in such a way as to detach the work of fine art from reality, as the object dissolves in a swirl of pigment. Two instances of Turner's style of expressive abstraction have already been mentioned, to which nosotros can add his Interior at Petworth (1837, Tate Collection). Other examples include the final sequence of Water Lily paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Talisman (1888, Musee d'Orsay, Paris) by Paul Serusier (1864-1927) leader of Les Nabis, and several Fauvist works of Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Several of Kandinsky'due south expressionist pictures painted during his time with Der Blaue Reiter come very close to brainchild, as does Deer in the Woods II (1913-xiv, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karsruhe) by his colleague Franz Marc (1880-1916). The Czech painter Frank Kupka (1871-1957) produced some of the first highly coloured abstruse paintings, which influenced Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) who besides relied on colour in his Cubist-inspired fashion of Orphism. Color-related brainchild re-emerged in the late 1940s and 50s in the form of Colour Field Painting, developed by Mark Rothko (1903-lxx) and Barnett Newman (1905-70). In 1950s France, a parallel type of colour-related abstract painting sprang up, known as Lyrical Brainchild.

Geometric Abstraction

This type of intellectual abstract art emerged from almost 1908 onwards. An early rudimentary form was Cubism, specifically belittling Cubism - which rejected linear perspective and the illusion of spatial depth in a painting, in order to focus on its 2-D aspects. Geometric Abstraction is besides known as Concrete Art and Non-Objective Art. As you might look, information technology is characterized by not-naturalistic imagery, typically geometrical shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and and then forth. In a sense - past containing admittedly no reference to, or association with, the natural world - it is the purest form of abstraction. 1 might say that concrete art is to abstraction, what veganism is to vegetarianism. Geometrical abstraction is exemplified by Black Circle (1913, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg) painted by Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) (founder of Suprematism); Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942, MoMA, New York) by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) (founder of Neo-Plasticism); and Limerick VIII (The Cow) (1918, MoMA, New York) by Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931) (founder of De Stijl and Elementarism). Other examples include the Homage to the Square pictures by Josef Albers (1888-1976), and Op-Art originated by Victor Vasarely (1906-1997).

Emotional or Intuitional Abstract Art

This type of intuitional art embraces a mix of styles, whose common theme is a naturalistic tendency. This naturalism is visible in the type of shapes and colours employed. Unlike Geometric Brainchild, which is nigh anti-nature, intuitional brainchild often evokes nature, just in less representational ways. 2 important sources for this type of abstract art are: Organic Brainchild (besides chosen Biomorphic abstraction) and Surrealism. Arguably, the nearly celebrated painter specializing in this type of fine art was the Russian-born Mark Rothko - see: Marking Rothko'due south Paintings (1938-seventy). Other examples include canvases by Kandinsky like Composition No.four (1911, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen), and Composition 7 (1913, Tretyakov Gallery); the typical Teller, Gabel und Nabel (1923, Individual Collection) past Jean Arp (1887-1966), Woman (1934, Individual Collection) by Joan Miro (1893-1983), Inscape: Psychological Morphology no 104 (1939, Private Collection) past Matta (1911-2002); and Infinite Divisibility (1942, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo) by Yves Tanguy (1900-55). In sculpture, this type of abstraction is exemplified past The Kiss (1907, Kunsthalle, Hamburg) by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957); Mother and Kid (1934, Tate) by Barbara Hepworth(1903-1975); Behemothic Pip (1937, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou) by Jean Arp; 3 Continuing Figures (1953, Guggenheim Museum, Venice) past Henry Moore (1898-1986).

Gestural Abstract Art

This is a grade of abstract expressionism, where the process of making the painting becomes more important than usual. Paint may exist applied in unusual means, brushwork is often very loose, and rapid. Famous American exponents of gestural painting include Jackson Pollock (1912-56), the inventor of Action-Painting, and his wife Lee Krasner (1908-84) who inspired him with her own form of drip-painting; Willem de Kooning (1904-97), famous for his Woman series of works; and Robert Motherwell (1912-56), noted for his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. In Europe, this course is exemplified past Tachisme, likewise equally by the Cobra Group, notably Karel Appel (1921-2006).

Minimalist Abstract Art

This type of abstraction was a back-to-basics sort of avant-garde art, stripped of all external references and associations. Information technology is what you come across - nothing else. Information technology often takes a geometrical class, and is dominated by sculptors, although it as well includes some great painters. For more information on minimalist art, meet below ("Postmodernist Abstraction").

Origins and History

Stone Age Abstract Paintings

Every bit far as we can tell, abstruse art first began some 70,000 years ago with prehistoric engravings: namely, two pieces of rock engraved with abstruse geometric patterns, found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa. This was followed past the abstract ruddy-ochre dots and manus stencils discovered amongst the El Castillo Cave paintings, dated to 39,000 BCE, the Neanderthal engraving at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, and the society-shaped claviform image among the Altamira Cave paintings (c.34,000 BCE). Thereafter, abstract symbols became the predominant class of Paleolithic cave art, outnumbering figurative images past ii:i. See: Prehistoric Abstract Signs.

From Academic Realism to Brainchild

Upwardly until the belatedly 19th century, well-nigh painting and sculpture followed the traditional principles of Classical Realism, as taught in the great Academies of Europe. These principles laid down that fine art's first duty was to provide a recognizable scene or object. All the same much affected by the demands of style or medium, a piece of work of art had to imitate or represent external reality. However, during the last quarter of the 19th century, things began to change. Impressionist fine art demonstrated that the strict academic mode of naturalistic painting was no longer the only authentic way of doing things. Then, during the period 1900-1930, developments in other areas of modern art provided additional techniques (involving colour, a rejection of 3-D perspective, and new shapes), which would be used to further the quest for abstraction.

Artists Start To Motion Away From Reality

The first of the major modern art movements to subvert the bookish style of classical realism was Impressionism (fl.1870-1880), whose palette was often decidedly non-naturalistic, although its art remained firmly and clearly derived from the real world, even if Claude Monet's final work on his H2o Lilies genre seemed more than akin to abstraction. The emergence of abstruse art was too influenced by the Fine art Nouveau movement (c.1890-1914).

Kandinsky, Expressionism & Fauvism Demonstrate The Ability of Colour

The utilise of colour and shape to movement the spectator was paramount in the development of abstract art. Impressionism, including the variants of Neo-Impressionist Pointillism and Mail service-Impressionism, had already drawn attending to the power of colour, only German Expressionism fabricated information technology the cornerstone of painting. Ane of its leaders, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) published a volume entitled 'On The Spirtual In Art' (1911), which became the foundation text of abstract painting.

Kandinsky was convinced by the emotional properties of shape, line and above all, colour in painting. (He had an aberrant sensitivity to colour, which he could hear as well equally encounter, a condition called synaesthesia.) He believed a painting should not exist analyzed intellectually only allowed to reach those parts of the brain that connect with music.

Even and then, he warned that serious fine art must not exist atomic number 82 by the desire for abstraction into becoming mere decoration. Almost German Expressionists (eg. Ernst Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Ernst, Alexei Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, Franz Marc, Baronial Macke and Max Beckmann) were not abstract painters, but their bright palette - along with Kandinsky'south theoretical writings - alerted other more abstruse-inclined artists to the power of color as a ways of achieving their goals.

The parallel Parisian avant-garde style of Fauvism (1905-08) merely underlined the effect of colour with works like Crimson Studio (1911, MoMA, NY) by Henri Matisse.

Cubism Rejects Perspective and Pictorial Depth

Cubism (1908-14) was a reaction confronting the decorative prettiness of Impressionism. Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) developed this new style in stages: kickoff, proto-type Cubism (see Picasso'due south semi-abstruse Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, MoMA, NY); then Analytical Cubism (run into Nude Descending a Staircase No.2, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art) by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968); and so Synthetic Cubism, which was more collage-oriented. Their basic concept was to move away from the pretty but trivial art of Impressionism, towards a more intellectual class of art which explored new methods of portraying reality.

In item, they rejected the academic method of representing reality through the use of linear perspective (depth) to create the usual three-dimensional effect in a painting. Instead, they kept everything on a ii-dimensional flat plane, upon which they laid out unlike 'views' of the same object: a process like to taking photographs of an object from different angles, and so cutting upward the photos and pasting them on a apartment surface. This method of using a flat surface to depict 3-D reality, rocked art to its foundations. Although nearly Cubist works were nevertheless derived from objects or scenes in the real world, and thus cannot be considered to be wholly abstruse, the movement's rejection of traditional perspective completely undermined natural-realism in art, and thus opened the door to pure brainchild.

Cubist-inspired abstract sculptors include: Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), who was likewise influenced by African and Oriental fine art.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), who used Cubist devices to represent motion, and Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973).

For an early 20th century abstract style of painting which attempted to blend Cubist limerick with colour and music, encounter: Orphism. A British pre-war fine art movement which was strongly influenced past the Cubist idiom, was Vorticism (1913-fourteen), founded past Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

The Italian Futurism move (1909-xiii), founded past Marinetti (1876-1944) and exemplified by Gino Severini (1883-1966) and Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), was also influenced past Cubism, and in turn inspired numerous painters with its emphasis on movement and technology. In sculpture, Futurism's greatest outcome was on the development of Kinetic art, influencing abstract sculptors like Naum Gabo (1890-1977) and Alexander Calder (1898-1976) (noted for his mobiles).

Note: "Tubism", invented by Fernand Leger (1881-1955), was a course of Cubism which used cylindrical and spherical pieces - rather than Cubism's apartment overlapping pieces - and included numerous machine-like motifs, reflecting Leger's futuristic faith in technology. See, for example, works like: Soldiers Playing at Cards (1917, Kroller-Muller Land Museum, Otterlo); The Mechanic (1920, National Gallery of Canada); Three Women (Le K Dejeuner) (1921, Museum of Modern Fine art, New York).

Suprematism and De Stijl Introduce New Geometric Shapes

Traditional fine art painting and sculpture relies on shapes taken from the existent world, of which in that location are limitless examples. In contrast, abstract artists are obliged to rely on artificial, not-natural forms. Thus abstract art is typically concerned with the production of diverse geometric shapes. And the size and character of these shapes, their relationship to each other, too equally the colours used throughout the work, become the defining motifs of abstraction.

Russian Suprematism

The Russian abstract art movement known as Suprematism, which was named by its leader Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) for its exclamation of the supremacy of sensation in art, appeared in 1915. No doubtfulness influenced past Kandinsky who had already begun to produce a range of concretist works, Malevich produced a series of outstanding avant-garde abstract paintings - rectangular blocks of plainly color floating on a white background - which were decades alee of his time. He saw them as successors to the traditional icon-imagery of the Russian Orthodox Church in the flat Byzantine mode of Antiquity. In 1927, his Suprematist theory was published in a book entitled Die Gegenstandlose Welt (The Non-Objective World). Lyubov Popova (1889-1924), forth with Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) considered one of the co-founders of the Russian fashion of Constructivism (a school concerned with space, new materials, 3-D form, equally well every bit science and social reform) was another of import fellow member of the Suprematist movement. Some other interesting Russian art motility which introduced new imagery was Rayonism (or Luchism) (1912-14), founded by Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962). Abstract sculptors who were influenced past Suprematist/Constructivist ideas included Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) and Naum Gabo (1890-1977).

De Stijl

De Stijl was the proper name of a Dutch design and aesthetics journal and advanced art motility, devoted to geometric abstraction (non-objective art), which was founded and led by Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931). Its leading figure was Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), who is famous for his series of simple rectangular grids, using merely black, white and primary colours - a fashion he chosen Neo-Plasticism (Nieuwe Beelding). One of the nearly influential pioneers of concrete art during the period 1920-1944, he developed his precise geometric style as a counter-statement to the emotional chaos and uncertainty of the offset half of the twentieth century. Involved with the abstract group Cercle et Carre (1929-31), too as the Abstraction-Creation Group (1930-6), he moved to New York in 1938, and was allegedly the starting time painter to work to gramaphone music.

Van Doesburg was less dogmatic, introducing a more relaxed form of Neo-Plasticism, chosen Elementarism. He was also responsible, in 1930, for coining the term "Concrete Fine art". Sadly he died in 1931, but his ideas were continued not just by students of the Bauhaus design school (where he had lectured), but too by the Brainchild-Creation group - led by the Belgian artist Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965) and the French painters Jean Helion (1904-87) and Auguste Herbin (1882-1960). Other group members included the foam of European abstractionists, such as Jean Arp (1886-1966), Naum Gabo (1890-1977), El Lissitzky (1890-1941), Antoine Pevsner (1886-1962), Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and Ben Nicholson (1894-1982). The Swiss ex-Bauhaus architect, sculptor and designer Max Bill (1908-94) was another follower who helped to promote the genre in Switzerland, Italy, Argentina and Brazil.

Surrealist and Organic Brainchild

In parallel with the development of geometric-fashion concretism, during the 1920s and 1930s, exponents of Surrealism began to produce a range of fantasy-like, quasi-naturalistic images. The leading exemplars of this style of Biomorphic/Organic Brainchild were Jean Arp and Joan Miro, neither of whom - as their many preparatory sketches ostend - relied on the technique of automatism. Their fellow Surrealist Salvador Dali (1904-89) also produced some extraordinary paintings like The Persistence of Retentivity (1931, MoMA, NY) and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Jean Arp was likewise an active sculptor who specialized in Organic Abstraction, as did the English language sculptors Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). (See: Modern British Sculpture 1930-70.) A number of European abstruse artists later sought sanctuary in America, where they encountered and influenced a new generation of indigenous abstract painters. These influential emigrants included painters like Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), Max Ernst (1891-1976), Andre Masson (1896-1987), Arshile Gorky (1904-48), Yves Tangy (1900-55) and others. As information technology happened, despite the controversy surrounding New York's Armory Testify in 1913, the city was developing a bully involvement in abstraction. The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later renamed the Samuel R Guggenheim Museum), in 1939.

Note: For ii collectors of abstract painting and sculpture of the first one-half of the 20th century, see: Solomon Guggenheim (1861-1949) and Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979).

Notation: For avant-garde abstraction in U.k. (c.1939-75) delight see: St Ives Schoolhouse.

Abstruse Expressionism - More Colour, No More Geometry

Although mail-state of war European artists maintained their interest in abstract art through the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in Paris, by 1945 the centre of modern art had shifted to New York, where the advanced was represented by the New York School of Abstruse Expressionism. Arising out of the Great Depression and World War 2, this movement, never associated with a coherent plan as such, was led by Jackson Pollock (1912-56), Mark Rothko (1903-70), Willem De Kooning (1904-97), Clyfford Still (1904-80), Barnett Newman (1905-lxx) and Adolph Gottlieb (1903-74). The next generation included painters such as Robert Motherwell. The name of the motility was coined by Robert Coates, art critic of the New Yorker. Offshoots include Pollock's 'Action Painting' and Rothko's 'Colour Field Painting', and the curious 'Abstruse Impressionism' of Philip Guston (1913-eighty).

Abstruse Expressionist Painting remains a vague term - oftentimes confusingly applied to artists who are neither truly abstract, nor expressionist - which describes a form of abstract painting (not-figurative, non-naturalistic) in which colour takes precedence over shape; the latter being no longer geometric. Early works in this style typically filled large calibration canvases, whose size was designed to overwhelm spectators and draw them into another world. The preoccupation of abstruse expressionists with visual furnishings, particularly the touch on of colour, was a reflection of their primary goal - to involve and explore basic human emotions. Thus an abstruse expressionist painting is best felt intuitively rather than understood: the question posed being typically: 'what does it make you lot feel?' - rather than, 'what is information technology saying?'

Information technology must be emphasized that this was a wide movement, encompassing differing styles, including (every bit mentioned) works that were either semi- or non-abstract, likewise every bit those characterized by the way paint was practical, such equally Jackson Pollock's paintings (dripped and poured), and Willem de Kooning's works (gestural brushwork). For two interesting early works that illustrate the differing styles of these two artists, see: Seated Adult female (1944, Metropolitan Museum of Art) past Willem de Kooning and Pasiphae (1943, Metropolitan) by Jackson Pollock. The fact that it was the starting time major art motion born in the USA, gave information technology added weight and significance: at least in the minds of critics.

Afterwards, Abstract Expressionism spawned a number of individual styles under the umbrella of Post-painterly abstraction, an anti-gesturalist tendency. These individual styles included: Hard-Edge Painting, Colour Stain Painting, Washington Colour Movement, American Lyrical Abstraction, and Shaped Canvas. Abstract Expressionism too provoked avant-garde responses from several other artists including Cy Twombly (1928-2011), whose calligraphic scribbling is part-drawing, part-graffiti; and the Californian abstract sculptor Mark Di Suvero (b.1933) noted for his big scale iron/steel sculptures.

Europe: Art Informel, Tachisme & Cobra Group Gesturalism

In Europe, a new art movement known every bit Art Informel emerged during the late 1940s. Seen every bit the European version of abstract expressionism, it was in reality an umbrella movement with a number of sub-variants. These mini-movements included: (1) Tachisme, a style of abstract painting marked by splotches and dabs of colour, was promoted equally the French respond to American Abstract Expressionism. A key influence was the advanced American artist Mark Tobey (1890-1976), whose all-over calligraphic painting manner anticipated that of Pollock. Of import members included Jean Fautrier (1898-1964), Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), Pierre Soulages (b.1919), and the Portuguese creative person Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-92) too as the American abstract expressionist Sam Francis (1923-94). (ii) The advanced Cobra Group, which practised the gestural or "action painting" fashion of American Abstract Expressionism. Information technology was founded by painters, sculptors and graphic artists from the Danish group Host, the Dutch grouping Reflex, and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealist Group, including: Asger Jorn (1914-73), the Belgian writer Christian Dotremont (1922-79), Pierre Alechinsky (b.1927), Karel Appel (1921-2006) and Constant (C.A. Nieuwenhuys) (1920-2005). Politico Bury (1922-2005) was besides a member, but in 1953 he quit painting to explore kinetic sculpture. (iii) Lyrical Abstraction, a quieter, more harmonious style of Art Informel. Leading members included: Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) (1913-51), Hans Hartung (1904-89), Jean-Michel Atlan (1913-lx), Pierre Soulages (b.1919), Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), and Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002). Other sub-groups included Forces Nouvelles, and Art Non Figuratif.

Op-Art: The New Geometric Abstraction

One of the most distinct styles of geometric abstract painting to emerge from the modernist era, was the Op-Art move (an abridgement of 'optical art') whose hallmark was the engagement of the eye, by means of complex, often monochromatic, geometric patterns, to cause information technology to see colours and shapes that were non actually there. Leading members included the Hungarian painter and graphic designer Victor Vasarely (1908-97), and the English painter Bridget Riley (b.1931). The movement disappeared by the early 1970s.

Postmodernist Abstraction

Since the start of postmodernism (since the mid-60s) contemporary art has tended to fragment into smaller, more than local schools. This is because the prevailing philosophy among contemporary art movements has been to distrust the grand styles of the early 20th century. An exception is the Minimalism schoolhouse, a back-to-basics style of geometric abstraction exemplified past postmodernist artists like sculptors Donald Judd (1928-94), Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), Robert Morris (b.1931), Walter de Maria (b.1935), and Carl Andre (b.1935). Some other important minimalist sculptor is Richard Serra (b.1939) whose abstract works include Tilted Arc (1981, Federal Plaza, New York) and The Affair of Fourth dimension (2004, Guggenheim Bilbao). Noted abstract painters associated with Minimalism include Ad Reinhardt (1913-67), Frank Stella (b.1936), whose large scale paintings involve interlocking clusters of shape and colours; Sean Scully (b.1945) the Irish-American painter whose rectangular shapes of colour seem to imitate the monumental forms of prehistoric structures; equally well as Jo Baer (b.1929), Ellsworth Kelly (b.1923), Robert Mangold (b.1937), Brice Marden (b.1938), Agnes Martin (1912-2004), and Robert Ryman (b.1930).

In function a reaction against the austerity of minimalism, Neo-Expressionism was mainly a figurative movement which emerged from the early 1980s onwards. However, it also included a number of outstanding abstract painters such equally the Englishman Winner Howard Hodgkin (b.1932), also as the German artists Georg Baselitz (b.1938), Anselm Kiefer (b.1945), and others. Amid several other internationally acclaimed abstract artists who achieved recognition during the 1980s and 1990s, is the British sculptor Anish Kapoor (b.1954), noted for big-scale works in rough hewn stone, cast metallic and stainless steel. Both Hodgkin and Kapoor are Turner Prize Winners.

Collections of Abstruse Art

Non-representational art tin be seen in most of the best art museums around the world. Notable collections are held by the following institutions

• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
• Samuel R Guggenheim Museum, New York.
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
• Tate Gallery, London.
• Georges Pompidou Heart, Paris.
• Guggenheim Bilbao.
• Guggenheim Venice.
• Kunstmuseum, Basel.

giffordight1942.blogspot.com

Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/abstract-art.htm

Share this post