abstract art

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abstract art. Art that does not depict recognizable scenes or objects, but instead is made up of forms and colours that exist for their own expressive sake. Much decorative art can thus be described as abstract, but in normal usage the term refers to 20th-century painting and sculpture that abandon the traditional European conception of art as the imitation of nature. Herbert Read (Art Now, revised edn., 1948) gave the following definition: ‘in practice we call “abstract” all works of art which, though they may start from the artist's awareness of an object in the external world, proceed to make a self-consistent and independent aesthetic unity in no sense relying on an objective equivalence.’ Abstract art in this sense was born and achieved its distinctive identity in the decade 1910–20 and is now regarded as the most characteristic form of 20th-century art. It has developed into many different movements and ‘isms’, but two or three basic tendencies are recognizable. In Cubism and Abstract Art (1936), Alfred H. Barr, ‘at the risk of grave oversimplification’, divided abstraction into two main currents: the first (represented by Malevich) he described as ‘intellectual, structural, architectonic, geometrical, rectilinear and classical in its austerity and dependence upon logic and calculation’; the second (exemplified by Kandinsky) he described as ‘intuitional and emotional rather than intellectual; organic or biomorphic rather than geometrical in its forms; curvilinear rather than rectilinear, decorative rather than structural, and romantic rather than classical in its exaltation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational’. Looking at the subject in a slightly different way (and from a later viewpoint than Barr's), it is possible to see three main strands in abstract art: (i) the reduction of natural appearances to radically simplified forms, exemplified in the sculpture of Brancusi (one meaning of the verb ‘abstract’ is to summarize or concentrate); (ii) the construction of works of art from non-representational basic forms (often simple geometric shapes), as in Ben Nicholson's reliefs; (iii) spontaneous, ‘free’ expression, as in the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock. Many exponents of such art dislike the term ‘abstract’ (Arp, for example, hated it, insisting on the word ‘Concrete’), but the alternatives they prefer, although perhaps more precise, are often cumbersome, notably non-figurative, non-representational, and Non-Objective.

The basic aesthetic premiss of abstract art—that formal qualities can be thought of as existing independently of subject-matter—existed long before the 20th century. Ultimately the idea can be traced back to Plato, who in his dialogue Philebus (c. 350 bc) puts the following words into Socrates' mouth: ‘I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals and pictures … but understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measures of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things, but eternally and absolutely beautiful.’ More explicitly, in his 10th Discourse to the students of the Royal Academy (1780), Sir Joshua Reynolds advised that ‘we are sure from experience that the beauty of form alone, without the assistance of any other quality, makes of itself a great work, and justly claims our esteem and admiration’; and in discussing the Belvedere Torso (a famous antique sculpture) he referred to ‘the perfection of this science of abstract form’. Many eminent critics of the 19th century followed this line. In 1846, for example, Charles Baudelaire wrote that ‘painting is interesting only in virtue of line and colour’; in 1890—in a much quoted remark— Maurice Denis said ‘Remember that a picture—before being a war horse or a nude woman or an anecdote—is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’; and in 1896 George Santayana, after noting that colour may produce unpleasant as well as pleasant effects, ‘almost like a musical discord’, proposed that ‘a more general development of this sensibility would make possible a new abstract art, an art that should deal with colours as music does with sound’ (the analogy with music was often pursued; Whistler, for example, sometimes gave his paintings pseudo-musical titles, as later did Kandinsky, Kupka, and other artists, including the Lithuanian composer-painter M. K. Čiurlionis).

Many of the leading painters of the 1890s—notably the Symbolists—stressed the expressive properties of colour, line, and shape rather than their representative function, and the major avant-garde movements of the first decade of the 20th century—notably Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism—took this process further. At the same time, the flat linear plant forms typical of Art Nouveau were sometimes only a short step away from abstraction, as in a painting such as Composition (c. 1902, Stadtmuseum, Munich) by Hans Schmithals.

By 1910, then, the time was ripe for abstract art, and it developed more or less simultaneously in various countries. Kandinsky is often cited as the first person to paint an abstract picture, but no artist can in fact be singled out for the distinction; as George Heard Hamilton writes, ‘it is probable that there was never a particular moment when a particular individual for the first time self-consciously set out upon the new path. Rather, a number of artists in several different places and at various times, although on the whole within a year or so of 1910, came gradually to understand the limitless potentials of design divorced from representation.’ (A work by Kandinsky known as ‘First Abstract Watercolour’ (Pompidou Centre, Paris) is signed and dated 1910, but some scholars believe that it is later and was inscribed by Kandinsky some years after its execution. This kind of problem arises not only with Kandinsky: several early abstract artists were keen to stress the primacy of their ideas and were not above backdating works—see, for example, RAYONISM.) Among the other pioneers who produced abstract paintings at about the same early date as Kandinsky were the American Arthur Dove and the Swiss Augusto Giacometti (1877–1947), cousin of Alberto Giacometti.

The individual pioneers were soon followed by abstract groups and movements—among the first were Orphism and Synchromism in France. There was a particularly rich crop in Russia, with Constructivism, Rayonism, and Suprematism all launched by 1915. With some artists, abstraction represented merely a brief phase in their careers (among them the British artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Wyndham Lewis), but with others it was a vocation or even a mission. The almost religious fervour with which some of the Russian artists pursued their ideals was matched by the members of the De Stijl group in Holland, founded in 1917 ( Herbert Read thought that the most serious pioneers of abstract art tended to belong to ‘the metaphysically anguished races—Russian, German, and Dutch’). To such artists, abstraction was not simply a matter of style, but a question of finding a visual idiom capable of expressing their most deeply felt ideas.

Kandinsky and Mondrian, probably the most famous and influential pioneers of abstraction, shared an almost mystical attitude towards art. Although their paintings are at virtually opposite poles of abstraction—Kandinsky's free-flowing and emotional, Mondrian's rigorously geometrical—both artists were influenced by theosophy, an ancient philosophical system that became a modern cult with the foundation of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875. Theosophists believe that the universe is essentially spiritual in nature, and their idea that a deep harmony underlies the apparent chaos of the world had strong appeal to artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian who thought their paintings could help bring about a spiritual revival in the materialistic West. Kandinsky formulated his philosophical justification for abstract art shortly before he began painting purely abstract pictures, in his famous book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (written in the summer of 1910 and published late in 1911). He thought that if the artist could go beyond the outer shell of appearances he could ‘touch the beholder's soul’; colour was a prime means of achieving this goal, for he believed that colours have ‘a spiritual vibration’ that could be linked with ‘a corresponding vibration in the human soul’. His attempt to visualize the spiritual had precedents in the colour illustrations accompanying accounts of higher worlds in certain Theosophical texts. One of these was Thought Forms (1905) by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbetter, illustrated with cloud-like configurations. A German translation appeared in 1908 and Kandinsky owned a copy. (There is an earlier precedent in the ‘spirit drawings’ made in the 1860s by the British artist Georgiana Houghton; see AUTOMATISM.) Mondrian joined the Theosophical Society in 1909 and remained a member all his life. Like Kandinsky, he thought that abstract art could penetrate external appearances to reveal a greater truth beneath, and he believed that his art of clarity and balance would lead to a society in which life would be governed by a universal visual harmony.

Among the other pioneers of abstract art who were influenced by theosophy were Kasimir Malevich, who tried to paint the ‘supreme reality’, and Theo van oesburg, Mondrian's principal colleague in De Stijl. Van Doesburg was extremely active in promoting the group's ideas, and in the period between the two world wars its severely geometrical style was one of the most influential currents in abstraction, together with the technologically-orientated Constructivism (they came together in the Bauhaus). Paris was the main centre of abstract art at this time, partly because it attracted so many refugee artists from Germany and Russia, where abstract art was banned in the 1930s under Hitler and Stalin. There was also a strong abstract element in Surrealism, which was born in Paris. The first exhibition devoted solely to abstract art was held there by the Cercle et Carré group in 1930, and its successor, the Abstraction-Création association, founded in 1931, brought together a large number of abstract artists of various types and provided a focus for their activities. In general, however, figurative art was dominant in the interwar period and abstract art won little public acceptance. It was very much a minority taste in Britain and the USA, for example, in spite of such outstanding individual contributions as the sculptures of Calder and Hepworth and the efforts of groups such as American Abstract Artists (founded in 1936) and Unit One (founded in 1933). Indeed, as late as 1953 the British artist Adrian Heath opened his book Abstract Painting by saying: ‘There seems to be little understanding of the values of abstract painting and consequently no general appreciation of its qualities. Other aspects of modern art are invariably found more stimulating. When, therefore, the pretensions of abstract painting as an art form are seriously stressed, or when public money has been spent on its acquisition, a violent reaction is provoked.’ (For an example of such a reaction in England see FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN.)

However, by the time that Heath wrote these words, abstract art was already entering its second heroic period with the burgeoning of Abstract Expressionism in the USA and its European equivalent Art Informel. By about 1960 abstract art was not only widely accepted but on the verge of becoming the dominant orthodoxy in Western art. It no longer seemed to need philosophical justification of the kind given by Kandinsky and Mondrian (although several of the Abstract Expressionists were equally high-minded in approach); however, abstraction was sometimes invested with a moral dimension as an embodiment of Western freedom of thought, as opposed to the totalitarianism that had banned avant-garde art in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (see DEGENERATE ART and SOCIALIST REALISM). In this respect it is significant that many of the Abstract Expressionists were influenced by European Surrealists who had fled to New York during the Second World War to escape the fear of such repression. Thus, in the USA particularly, support for abstract art could be regarded almost as a form of patriotism— Clement Greenberg used the term ‘American-Type Painting’ as an alternative to Abstract Expressionism, and one of the standard books on the movement ( Irving Sandler's Abstract Expressionism, 1970) is subtitled The Triumph of American Painting. Indeed, Eva Cockcroft writes that ‘Links between cold war politics and the success of Abstract Expressionism are by no means coincidental … They were consciously forged at the time by some of the most influential figures controlling museum politics’ (‘Abstract Expressionism: Weapon of the Cold War’, Artforum, June 1974). Abstract Expressionism represented a great watershed in art and many later developments were either evolutions from it or reactions against it. These included a revival of figuration, in the form particularly of Pop art, but also new styles of abstraction, including Post-Painterly abstraction, Op art, and Minimal art, all of which flourished in the 1960s.

Some exponents and supporters of abstract art have argued that it can reach the same heights as the greatest art of the past. Kandinsky, for example, wrote that ‘The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo's Creation’. Keith Vaughan's succinct reply to this comment was ‘Not to me, boy’, and many critics have sympathized with him rather than Kandinsky. Among them have been Kenneth Clark, who found abstract art ‘somewhat monotonous’, and E. H. Gombrich, who in 1958 wrote: ‘To me it seems that there are works of colour music, canvasses by Kandinsky which are really pleasing, just as there are figures or shapes by Mondrian or Nicholson which command respect and interest … But when I seriously compare my reaction to the best “abstract” canvas with some work of great music that has meant something to me, it fades into the sphere of the merely decorative.’ Later Gombrich added: ‘I do not think abstract art can ever be as good as the art of a religious age. It stands on a different level of human aspiration.’

abstract art. Art that does not depict recognizable scenes or objects, but instead is made up of forms and colours that exist for their own expressive sake. Much decorative art can thus be described as abstract, but in normal usage the term refers to modern painting and sculpture that abandon the traditional European conception of art as the imitation of nature. Abstract art in this sense was born and achieved its distinctive identity in the decade 1910–20 and is now regarded as the most characteristic form of 20th-century art. It has developed into many different movements and ‘isms’, but two or three basic tendencies are recognizable. In Cubism and Abstract Art (1936), Alfred H. Barr, ‘at the risk of grave oversimplification’, divided abstraction into two main currents: the first (represented by Malevich) he described as ‘intellectual, structural, architectonic, geometrical, rectilinear and classical in its austerity and dependence upon logic and calculation’; the second (exemplified by Kandinsky) he described as ‘intuitional and emotional rather than intellectual; organic or biomorphic rather than geometrical in its forms; curvilinear rather than rectilinear, decorative rather than structural, and romantic rather than classical in its exaltation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational’. Looking at the subject in a slightly different way (and from a later viewpoint than Barr's), it is possible to see three main strands in abstract art: (i) the reduction of natural appearances to radically simplified forms, exemplified in the sculpture of Brancusi (one meaning of the verb ‘abstract’ is to summarize or concentrate); (ii) the construction of works of art from non-representational basic forms (often simple geometric shapes), as in Ben Nicholson's reliefs; (iii) spontaneous, ‘free’ expression, as in the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock. Many exponents of such art dislike the word ‘abstract’ (Arp, for example, hated it, insisting on the word ‘Concrete’), but the alternatives they prefer, although perhaps more precise, are usually cumbersome, notably non-figurative, non-representational, and Non-Objective.

The basic aesthetic premiss of abstract art—that formal qualities can be thought of as existing independently of subject matter—existed long before the 20th century. Ultimately the idea can be traced back to Plato, who in his dialogue Philebus (c.350 bc) puts the following words into Socrates' mouth: ‘I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals and pictures…but understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measures of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things, but eternally and absolutely beautiful.’ More explicitly, in his Tenth Discourse (1780) to the students of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds advised that ‘we are sure from experience that the beauty of form alone, without the assistance of any other quality, makes of itself a great work, and justly claims our esteem and admiration’; and in discussing the Belvedere Torso he referred to ‘the perfection of this science of abstract form’. Several notable critics followed this line in the 19th century. In 1846, for example, Charles Baudelaire wrote that ‘painting is interesting only in virtue of line and colour’; in 1890—in a much-quoted remark— Maurice Denis said: ‘Remember that a picture—before being a war horse or a nude woman or an anecdote—is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’; and in 1896 George Santayana, after noting that colour may produce unpleasant as well as pleasant effects, ‘almost like a musical discord’, proposed that ‘a more general development of this sensibility would make possible a new abstract art, an art that should deal with colours as music does with sound’ (the analogy with music was often pursued; Whistler, for example, sometimes gave his paintings pseudo-musical titles, as later did Kandinsky, Kupka, and other artists, including the Lithuanian composer-painter M. K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911)). Many of the leading painters of the 1890s—notably the Symbolists—stressed the expressive properties of colour, line, and shape rather than their representative function, and this process was taken further by the major avant-garde movements of the first decade of the 20th century—especially Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism.

By 1910, then, the time was ripe for abstract art, and it developed more or less simultaneously in various countries. Kandinsky is often cited as the first person to paint an abstract picture, but no artist can in fact be singled out for the distinction. (A work by Kandinsky known as ‘First Abstract Watercolour’ (Pompidou Centre, Paris) is signed and dated 1910, but some scholars believe that it is later and was inscribed by Kandinsky several years after its execution. This kind of problem arises not only with Kandinsky: several early abstract artists were keen to stress the primacy of their ideas and were not above backdating works.) Among the other artists who produced abstract paintings at about the same early date as Kandinsky were the American Arthur Dove and the Swiss Augusto Giacometti, cousin of Alberto Giacometti.

The individual pioneers were soon followed by abstract groups and movements—among the first were Orphism and Synchromism in France. There was a particularly rich crop in Russia, with Constructivism, Rayonism, and Suprematism all launched by 1915. With some artists, abstraction represented merely a brief phase in their careers (among them the British artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Wyndham Lewis), but with others it was a vocation or even a mission. The almost religious fervour with which some of the Russian artists pursued their ideals was matched by the members of the De Stijl group in Holland, founded in 1917. To such artists, abstraction was not simply a matter of style, but a question of finding a visual idiom capable of expressing their most deeply felt ideas. Mondrian, for example, believed that his art of clarity and balance would lead to a society in which life would be governed by a universal visual harmony.

In the period between the two world wars, the severely geometrical style of De Stijl and the technologically orientated Constructivism were the most influential currents in abstraction (they came together in the Bauhaus). Paris was the main centre of abstract art at this time, partly because it attracted so many refugee artists from Germany and Russia, where abstract art was banned in the 1930s under Hitler and Stalin. There was also a strong abstract element in Surrealism, which was born in Paris. The first exhibition devoted solely to abstract art was held there by the Cercle et Carré group in 1930, and its successor, the Abstraction-Création association, founded in 1931, brought together a large number of abstract artists of various types and provided a focus for their activities. However, in general figurative art was dominant in the inter-war period and abstract art won little public acceptance. It was very much a minority taste in Britain and the USA, for example, in spite of such outstanding individual contributions as the sculptures of Hepworth and Calder and the efforts of groups such as Unit One (founded in 1933) and American Abstract Artists (founded in 1936).

The second heroic period of abstract art came after the Second World War, when the enormous success of Abstract Expressionism in the USA and its European equivalent Art Informel made abstraction for a time virtually the dominant orthodoxy in Western art. Abstract art no longer seemed to need philosophical justification of the kind given by Kandinsky and Mondrian (although several of the Abstract Expressionists were equally high-minded in approach); however, abstraction was sometimes invested with a moral dimension as an embodiment of Western freedom of thought, as opposed to the totalitarianism that had banned avant-garde art in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (see degenerate art and Socialist Realism). In this respect it is significant that many of the Abstract Expressionists were influenced by European Surrealists who had fled to New York during the Second World War to escape the fear of such repression. Thus, in the USA particularly, support for abstract art could be regarded almost as a form of patriotism. Abstract Expressionism represented a great watershed in art and many later developments were either evolutions from it or reactions against it. These included a revival of figuration, in the form particularly of Pop art, but also new styles of abstraction, including Post-Painterly Abstraction, Op art, and Minimal art, all of which flourished in the 1960s.

abstract art Art that does not depict recognizable scenes or objects, but instead is made up of forms and colours that exist for their own expressive sake. Much decorative art can thus be described as abstract, but in normal usage the term refers to modern painting and sculpture that abandon the traditional European conception of art as the imitation of nature. Abstract art in this sense was born and achieved its distinctive identity in the decade 1910–20 and is now regarded as the most characteristic form of 20th-century art. It has developed into many different movements and ‘isms’, but two or three basic tendencies are recognizable. In Cubism and Abstract Art (1936), Alfred H. Barr, ‘at the risk of grave oversimplification’, divided abstraction into two main currents: the first (represented by Malevich) he described as ‘intellectual, structural, architectonic, geometrical, rectilinear and classical in its austerity and dependence upon logic and calculation’; the second (exemplified by Kandinsky) he described as ‘intuitional and emotional rather than intellectual; organic or biomorphic rather than geometrical in its forms; curvilinear rather than rectilinear, decorative rather than structural, and romantic rather than classical in its exaltation of the mystical, the spontaneous and the irrational’. Looking at the subject in a slightly different way (and from a later viewpoint than Barr's), it is possible to see three main strands in abstract art:(a) the reduction of natural appearances to radically simplified forms, exemplified in the sculpture of Brancusi (one meaning of the verb ‘abstract’ is to summarize or concentrate); (b) the construction of works of art from non-representational basic forms (often simple geometric shapes), as in Ben Nicholson's reliefs; (c) spontaneous, ‘free’ expression, as in the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock. Many exponents of such art dislike the word ‘abstract’ (Arp, for example, hated it, insisting on the word ‘Concrete’), but the alternatives they prefer, although perhaps more precise, are usually cumbersome, notably non-figurative, non-representational, and Non-Objective.

The basic aesthetic premiss of abstract art—that formal qualities can be thought of as existing independently of subject matter—existed long before the 20th century. Ultimately the idea can be traced back to Plato, who in his dialogue Philebus (c.350 bc) puts the following words into Socrates' mouth: ‘I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals and pictures …but understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measures of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things, but eternally and absolutely beautiful.’ More explicitly, in his Tenth Discourse (1780) to the students of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds advised that ‘we are sure from experience that the beauty of form alone, without the assistance of any other quality, makes of itself a great work, and justly claims our esteem and admiration’; and in discussing the Belvedere Torso he referred to ‘the perfection of this science of abstract form’. In the 19th century several notable writers followed this line (Maurice Denis, for example) and many of the leading painters of the 1890s—notably the Symbolists—stressed the expressive properties of colour, line, and shape rather than their representative function. This process was taken further by the major avant-garde movements of the first decade of the 20th century—especially Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism. By 1910, then, the time was ripe for abstract art, and it developed more or less simultaneously in various countries. Kandinsky is often cited as the first person to paint an abstract picture, but no artist can in fact be singled out for the distinction. (A work by Kandinsky known as ‘First Abstract Watercolour’ (Pompidou Centre, Paris) is signed and dated 1910, but some scholars believe that it is later and was inscribed by Kandinsky several years after its execution. This kind of problem arises not only with Kandinsky: several early abstract artists were keen to stress the primacy of their ideas and were not above backdating works.) Among the other artists who produced abstract paintings at about the same early date as Kandinsky were the American Arthur Dove and the Swiss Augusto Giacometti, cousin of Alberto Giacometti.

The individual pioneers were soon followed by abstract groups and movements—among the first were Orphism and Synchromism in France. There was a particularly rich crop in Russia, with Constructivism, Rayonism, and Suprematism all launched by 1915. With some artists, abstraction represented merely a brief phase in their careers (among them the British artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Wyndham Lewis), but with others it was a vocation or even a mission. The almost religious fervour with which some of the Russian artists pursued their ideals was matched by the members of the De Stijl group in Holland, founded in 1917. To such artists, abstraction was not simply a matter of style, but a question of finding a visual idiom capable of expressing their most deeply felt ideas. Mondrian, for example, believed that his art of clarity and balance would lead to a society in which life would be governed by a universal visual harmony. In the period between the two world wars, the severely geometrical style of De Stijl and the technologically orientated Constructivism were the most influential currents in abstraction (they came together in the Bauhaus). Paris was the main centre of abstract art at this time, partly because it attracted so many refugee artists from Germany and Russia, where abstract art was banned in the 1930s under Hitler and Stalin. There was also a strong abstract element in Surrealism, which was born in Paris. The first exhibition devoted solely to abstract art was held there by the Cercle et Carré group in 1930, and its successor, the Abstraction-Création association, founded in 1931, brought together a large number of abstract artists of various types and provided a focus for their activities. However, in general figurative art was dominant in the interwar period and abstract art won little public acceptance. It was very much a minority taste in Britain and the USA, for example, in spite of such outstanding individual contributions as the sculptures of Hepworth and Calder and the efforts of groups such as Unit One (founded in 1933) and American Abstract Artists (founded in 1936).

The second heroic period of abstract art came after the Second World War, when the enormous success of Abstract Expressionism in the USA and its European equivalent Art Informel made abstraction for a time virtually the dominant orthodoxy in Western art. Abstract art no longer seemed to need philosophical justification of the kind given by Kandinsky and Mondrian (although several of the Abstract Expressionists were equally high-minded in approach); however, abstraction was sometimes invested with a moral dimension as an embodiment of Western freedom of thought, as opposed to the totalitarianism that had banned avant-garde art in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (see Degenerate Art and Socialist Realism). In this respect it is significant that many of the Abstract Expressionists were influenced by European Surrealists who had fled to New York during the Second World War to escape the fear of such repression. Thus, in the USA particularly, support for abstract art could be regarded almost as a form of patriotism. Abstract Expressionism represented a great watershed in art and many later developments were either evolutions from it or reactions against it. These included a revival of figuration, in the form particularly of Pop art, but also new styles of abstraction, including Post-Painterly Abstraction, Op art, and Minimal art, all of which flourished in the 1960s.

abstract art Art in which recognizable objects are reduced to schematic marks. Although abstraction was evident in the impressionist, neo- and post-impressionist movements of the late 19th century, a separate identity did not become established until the early 20th century. Its most radical form is called non-objective or non-iconic art. In this, the artist creates marks, signs or three-dimensional constructions that have no connection with images or objects in the visible world. There are two main types of non-objective art: expressionist, which is fundamentally emotional, spontaneous and personal; and geometrical, which works from the premise that geometry is the only discipline precise and universal enough to express our intellectual and emotional longings. Art historians often credit Wassily Kandinsky with being the first to explore expressionist abstraction in c.1910. Kandinsky inspired the Blaue Reiter group and helped to pave the way towards abstract expressionism, action painting, and Tachism. Geometrical abstraction found (c.1913) its most adept, early exponents in Russia. The pioneers included Kasimir Malevich, who invented suprematism, and El Lissitzky, a leading proponent of constructivism. The French Section d'Or worked in parallel to the Russians. Others who provided landmarks in geometrical abstraction include Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, and Ben Nicholson; influential movements include De Stijl and concrete art. See also expressionism; Kupka, František

abstract art see abstract expressionism ; modern art .