A type of abstract art. Abstract art

Abstract art (lat. abstractio– removal, distraction) or non-figurative art- a direction of art that abandoned the depiction of forms close to reality in painting and sculpture. One of the goals of abstract art is to achieve “harmonization” by depicting certain color combinations and geometric shapes, evoking in the viewer a feeling of completeness and completeness of the composition. Prominent figures: Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Piet Mondrian.

Story

Abstractionism(art under the sign of “zero forms”, non-objective art) is an artistic direction that was formed in the art of the first half of the 20th century, completely abandoning the reproduction of forms of the real visible world. The founders of abstract art are considered to be V. Kandinsky , P. Mondrian And K. Malevich.

V. Kandinsky created his own type of abstract painting, freeing the impressionist and “wild” stains from any signs of objectivity. Piet Mondrian arrived at his non-objectivity through the geometric stylization of nature initiated by Cézanne and the Cubists. Modernist movements of the 20th century, focused on abstractionism, completely depart from traditional principles, denying realism, but at the same time remaining within the framework of art. The history of art experienced a revolution with the advent of abstract art. But this revolution did not arise by chance, but quite naturally, and was predicted by Plato! In his late work Philebus, he wrote about the beauty of lines, surfaces and spatial forms in themselves, independent of any imitation of visible objects, from any mimesis. This kind of geometric beauty, unlike the beauty of natural “irregular” forms, according to Plato, is not relative, but unconditional, absolute.

20th century and modern times

After World War I, 1914-18, abstract art tendencies often manifested themselves in individual works representatives of Dadaism and surrealism; At the same time, there was a desire to find application for non-figurative forms in architecture, decorative art, and design (experiments of the Style group and Bauhaus). Several groups of abstract art (" Concrete art", 1930; "Circle and Square", 1930; “Abstraction and Creativity”, 1931), uniting artists different nationalities and directions, arose in the early 30s, mainly in France. However, abstract art did not become widespread at that time, and by the mid-30s. the groups broke up. During the Second World War 1939–45, a school of so-called abstract expressionism arose in the United States (painters J. Pollock, M. Tobey etc.), which developed after the war in many countries (under the name tachisme or “formless art”) and proclaimed as its method “pure mental automatism” and the subjective subconscious impulsiveness of creativity, the cult of unexpected color and texture combinations.

In the second half of the 50s, installation art and pop art arose in the United States, which somewhat later glorified Andy Warhol with his endless circulation of portraits of Marilyn Monroe and cans of dog food - collage abstractionism. In the fine arts of the 60s, the least aggressive, static form of abstraction, minimalism, became popular. At the same time Barnett Newman, founder of American geometric abstract art along with A. Liberman, A. Held And K. Noland successfully engaged in the further development of the ideas of Dutch neoplasticism and Russian Suprematism.

Another movement of American painting is called “chromatic” or “post-painterly” abstractionism. Its representatives were to some extent inspired by Fauvism and Post-Impressionism. Rigid style, emphatically sharp outlines of the work E. Kelly, J. Jungerman, F. Stella gradually gave way to paintings of a contemplative melancholic nature. In the 70s - 80s american painting returned to figurativeness. Moreover, such an extreme manifestation as photorealism has become widespread. Most art historians agree that the 70s are the moment of truth for American art, since during this period it finally freed itself from European influence and became purely American. However, despite the return of traditional forms and genres, from portraiture to historical painting, abstractionism has not disappeared.

Paintings and works of “non-representational” art were created as before, since the return to realism in the USA was overcome not by abstractionism as such, but by its canonization, the ban on figurative art, which was identified primarily with our socialist realism, and therefore could not help but be considered odious in a “free democratic” society, a ban on “low” genres, on social functions art. At the same time, the style of abstract painting acquired a certain softness that it lacked before - streamlined volumes, blurred contours, richness of halftones, subtle color solutions (E. Murray, G. Stefan, L. Rivers, M. Morley, L. Chese, A. Bialobrod).

All these trends laid the foundation for the development modern abstract art. There can be nothing frozen or final in creativity, since that would be death for it. But no matter what path abstractionism takes, no matter what transformations it undergoes, its essence always remains unchanged. It is that abstractionism in fine art is the most accessible and noble way to capture personal existence, and in a form that is most adequate - like a facsimile print. At the same time, abstractionism is a direct realization of freedom.

Directions

In abstractionism, two clear directions can be distinguished: geometric abstraction, based primarily on clearly defined configurations (Malevich, Mondrian), and lyrical abstraction, in which the composition is organized from freely current forms(Kandinsky). There are also several other large independent movements in abstract art.

Cubism

An avant-garde movement in fine art that originated at the beginning of the 20th century and is characterized by the use of emphatically conventional geometric forms, the desire to “split” real objects into stereometric primitives.

Regionalism (Rayism)

A movement in abstract art of the 1910s, based on the shift of light spectra and light transmission. The idea of ​​the emergence of forms from the “intersection of reflected rays of various objects” is characteristic, since what a person actually perceives is not the object itself, but “the sum of the rays coming from the light source and reflected from the object.”

Neoplasticism

Designation of the movement of abstract art that existed in 1917–1928. in Holland and united artists grouped around the magazine “De Stijl” (“Style”). Characteristic are clear rectangular shapes in architecture and abstract painting in the arrangement of large rectangular planes, painted in the primary colors of the spectrum.

Orphism

Direction to French painting 1910s. Orphist artists sought to express the dynamics of movement and the musicality of rhythms with the help of “regularities” of the interpenetration of the primary colors of the spectrum and the mutual intersection of curved surfaces.

Suprematism

A movement in avant-garde art founded in the 1910s. Malevich. It was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric shapes. The combination of multi-colored geometric shapes forms balanced asymmetrical suprematist compositions permeated with internal movement.

Tachisme

A movement in Western European abstract art of the 1950s–60s, which became most widespread in the United States. It is painting with spots that do not recreate images of reality, but express the unconscious activity of the artist. Strokes, lines and spots in tachisme are applied to the canvas with quick movements of the hand without a pre-thought-out plan.

Abstract expressionism

The movement of artists painting quickly and on large canvases, using non-geometric strokes, large brushes, sometimes dripping paint onto the canvas to fully reveal emotions. The expressive painting method here is often as important as the painting itself.

Abstractionism in the interior

IN Lately abstractionism began to move from the paintings of artists into the cozy interior of the house, updating it advantageously. A minimalist style using clear forms, sometimes quite unusual, makes the room unusual and interesting. But it’s very easy to overdo it with color. Consider the combination orange color in this interior style.

White best dilutes the rich orange and, as it were, cools it down. The color of orange makes the room feel hotter, so a little; not prevent. The emphasis should be on the furniture or its design, for example, an orange bedspread. In this case, white walls will drown out the brightness of the color, but will leave the room colorful. In this case, paintings of the same scale will serve as an excellent addition - the main thing is not to overdo it, otherwise there will be problems with sleep.

Combination of orange and blue flowers detrimental to any room, unless it concerns the nursery. If you choose not bright shades, they will harmonize well with each other, add mood, and will not have a detrimental effect even on hyperactive children.

Orange goes well with green, creating the effect of a tangerine tree and a chocolate tint. Brown is a color that ranges from warm to cool, so it ideally normalizes the overall temperature of the room. In addition, this color combination is suitable for the kitchen and living room, where you need to create an atmosphere without overloading the interior. Having decorated the walls in white and chocolate colors, you can safely put an orange chair or hang a bright picture with rich tangerine color. While you are in such a room, you will have great mood and the desire to do as many things as possible.

Paintings by famous abstract artists

Kandinsky was one of the pioneers of abstract art. He began his search in impressionism, and only then came to the style of abstractionism. In his work, he exploited the relationship between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that embraced both the vision and the emotions of the viewer. He believed that complete abstraction provides scope for deep, transcendent expression, and copying reality only interferes with this process.

Painting was deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract shapes and colors that would transcend physical and cultural boundaries. He saw abstractionism as an ideal visual mode that can express the artist's "inner necessity" and convey human ideas and emotions. He considered himself a prophet whose mission was to share these ideals with the world for the benefit of society.

Hidden in bright colors and clear black lines depict several Cossacks with spears, as well as boats, figures and a castle on top of a hill. Like many paintings from this period, it imagines an apocalyptic battle that will lead to eternal peace.

To facilitate the development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his work On the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduces objects to pictographic symbols. By removing most references to the outside world, Kandinsky expressed his vision in a more universal way, translating the spiritual essence of the subject through all these forms into a visual language. Many of these symbolic figures were repeated and refined in his later works, becoming even more abstract.

Kazimir Malevich

Malevich's ideas about form and meaning in art somehow lead to a concentration on the theory of abstract art style. Malevich worked with different styles in painting, but was most focused on the study of pure geometric shapes (squares, triangles, circles) and their relationship to each other in visual space. Thanks to his contacts in the West, Malevich was able to convey his ideas about painting to artist friends in Europe and the United States, and thus profoundly influence the evolution of modern art.

"Black Square" (1915)

The iconic painting “Black Square” was first shown by Malevich at an exhibition in Petrograd in 1915. This work embodies theoretical principles Suprematism, developed by Malevich in his essay “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: New Realism in Painting.”

On the canvas in front of the viewer there is an abstract form in the form of a black square drawn on a white background - it is the only element of the composition. Although the painting appears simple, there are elements such as fingerprints and brush strokes visible through the black layers of paint.

For Malevich, the square signifies feelings, and the white signifies emptiness, nothingness. He saw the black square as a god-like presence, an icon, as if it could become a new sacred image for non-objective art. Even at the exhibition, this painting was placed in the place where an icon is usually placed in a Russian house.

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the Dutch De Stijl movement, is recognized for the purity of his abstractions and methodical practice. He simplified the elements of his paintings quite radically in order to represent what he saw not directly, but figuratively, and to create a clear and universal aesthetic language in his canvases. At its most famous paintings Since the 1920s, Mondrian has reduced forms to lines and rectangles, and the palette to the simplest. The use of asymmetrical balance became fundamental in the development of modern art, and his iconic abstract works remain influential in design and are familiar to popular culture today.

"The Gray Tree" is an example of Mondrian's early transition to style abstractionism. Three-dimensional wood is reduced to the simplest lines and planes, using just grays and blacks.

This painting is one of a series of works by Mondrian that were created with a more realistic approach, where, for example, trees are represented in a naturalistic manner. While more late works became increasingly abstract, for example, the lines of a tree diminishing until the shape of the tree becomes barely noticeable and secondary to the overall composition of vertical and horizontal lines. Here you can still see Mondrian's interest in abandoning the structured organization of lines. This step was significant for Mondrian's development of pure abstraction.

Robert Delaunay

Delaunay was one of the most early artists abstractionism style. His work influenced the development of this direction, based on the compositional tension that was caused by the opposition of colors. He quickly fell under the neo-impressionist coloristic influence and very closely followed the color scheme of works in the abstract style. He considered color and light to be the main tools with which one can influence the reality of the world.

By 1910, Delaunay made his own contribution to Cubism in the form of two series of paintings depicting cathedrals and the Eiffel Tower, which combined cubic forms, dynamic movement and bright colors. This new way the use of color harmony helped to separate this style from orthodox cubism, receiving the name Orphism, and immediately influenced European artists. Delaunay’s wife, artist Sonia Turk-Delone, continued to paint in the same style.

Delaunay's main work is dedicated to Eiffel Tower- the famous symbol of France. This is one of the most impressive of a series of eleven paintings dedicated to the Eiffel Tower between 1909 and 1911. It is painted bright red, which immediately distinguishes it from the grayness of the surrounding city. The impressive size of the canvas further enhances the grandeur of this building. Like a ghost, the tower rises above the surrounding houses, metaphorically shaking the very foundations of the old order. Delaunay's painting conveys this feeling of boundless optimism, innocence and freshness of a time that has not yet witnessed two world wars.

Frantisek Kupka

Frantisek Kupka is a Czechoslovakian artist who paints in the style abstractionism, graduated from the Prague Academy of Arts. As a student, he primarily painted on patriotic themes and wrote historical compositions. His early works were more academic, however, his style evolved over the years and eventually moved into abstract art. Written in a very realistic manner, even his early works contained mystical surreal themes and symbols, which continued when writing abstractions. Kupka believed that the artist and his work take part in a continuous creative activity, the nature of which is not limited, like an absolute.

“Amorpha. Fugue in two colors" (1907-1908)

Beginning in 1907-1908, Kupka began to paint a series of portraits of a girl holding a ball in her hand, as if she were about to play or dance with it. He then developed more and more schematic images of it, and eventually received a series of completely abstract drawings. They were made in a limited palette of red, blue, black and white flowers. In 1912, at the Salon d'Automne, one of these abstract works was exhibited publicly for the first time in Paris.

Modern abstract artists

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, artists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Kazemir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, have been experimenting with the shapes of objects and their perception, and also questioning existing canons in art. We have prepared a selection of the most famous contemporary abstract artists who decided to push their boundaries of knowledge and create their own reality.

German artist David Schnell(David Schnell) loves to wander through places where nature once reigned, but now they are piled up with human buildings - from playgrounds to plants and factories. Memories of these walks give birth to his bright abstract landscapes. By giving free rein to his imagination and memory rather than to photographs and videos, David Schnell creates paintings that resemble computer virtual reality or illustrations for science fiction books.

When creating her large-scale abstract paintings, the American artist Christine Baker(Kristin Baker) draws inspiration from the history of art and the racing of Nascar and Formula 1. She first gives her work dimension by applying several layers of acrylic paint and covering the silhouettes with tape. Christine then carefully peels it off, revealing the underlying layers of paint and making the surface of her paintings look like a multi-layered multi-colored collage. Actually last stage In her work, she scrapes off all the irregularities, making her paintings feel like an X-ray.

In her works, the artist of Greek origin from Brooklyn, New York, Eleanna Anagnos(Eleanna Anagnos) explores aspects of everyday life that often escape people's view. During her “dialogue with the canvas,” ordinary concepts acquire new meanings and facets: negative space becomes positive and small forms increase in size. Trying to breathe “life into her paintings” in this way, Eleanna tries to awaken the human mind, which has stopped asking questions and being open to something new.

Giving birth to bright splashes and smudges of paint on the canvas, the American artist Sarah Spitler(Sarah Spitler) strives to reflect chaos, disaster, imbalance and disorder in her work. She is attracted to these concepts because they are beyond human control. Therefore, their destructive power makes Sarah Spitler's abstract works powerful, energetic and exciting. Besides. the resulting image on canvas made of ink, acrylic paints, graphite pencils and enamel emphasizes the ephemerality and relativity of what is happening around.

Inspired by architecture, the artist from Vancouver, Canada, Jeff Dapner(Jeff Depner) creates multi-layered abstract paintings consisting of geometric shapes. In the artistic “chaos” he creates, Jeff seeks harmony in color, form and composition. Each of the elements in his paintings is connected to each other and leads to the next: “My works explore the compositional structure [of a painting] through the relationships of colors in the chosen palette...”. According to the artist, his paintings are “abstract signs” that should take viewers to a new, unconscious level.

One of the main trends in avant-garde art. Main principle abstract art - refusal to imitate visible reality and operate with its elements in the process of creating a work. Instead of the realities of the surrounding world, the object of art becomes a toolkit artistic creativity– color, line, shape. The plot is replaced by a plastic idea. The role of the associative principle in the artistic process increases many times over, and it also becomes possible to express the feelings and moods of the creator in abstract images, cleared of the outer shell, which are capable of concentrating the spiritual principle of phenomena and being its carriers (theoretical works of V.V. Kandinsky).

Random elements of abstraction can be identified in world art throughout its entire development, starting with rock paintings. But the origin of this style should be sought in the painting of the Impressionists, who tried to decompose color into individual elements. Fauvism consciously developed this tendency, “revealing” color, emphasizing its independence and making it the object of the image. Of the Fauvists, Franz Marc and Henri Matisse came closest to abstraction (his words are symptomatic: “all art is abstract”), and the French Cubists (especially Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger) and the Italian Futurists (Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini) also moved along this path. . But none of them was able or willing to overcome the figurative border. “We admit, however, that some reminder of existing forms should not be completely banished, at least at the present time” (A. Glaze, J. Metzinger. About Cubism. St. Petersburg, 1913. P. 14).

The first abstract works appeared in the late 1900s – early 1910s in Kandinsky’s work while working on the text “On the Spiritual in Art,” and his first abstract painting is considered to be his “Painting with a Circle” (1911. NMG). His reasoning dates back to this time: “<...>only that form is correct which<...>materializes the content accordingly. All sorts of side considerations, and among them the correspondence of the form to the so-called “nature”, i.e. external nature, are insignificant and harmful, since they distract from the only task of the form - the embodiment of content. Form is the material expression of abstract content” (Content and form. 1910 // Kandinsky 2001. T. 1. P.84).

At an early stage, abstract art, represented by Kandinsky, absolutized color. In the study of color, practical and theoretical, Kandinsky developed the theory of color of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and laid the foundations for the theory of color in painting (among Russian artists, M.V. Matyushin, G.G. Klutsis, I.V. Klyun and others studied color theory) .

In Russia in 1912–1915, abstract painting systems of Rayonism (M.F. Larionov, 1912) and Suprematism (K.S. Malevich, 1915) were created, which largely determined the further evolution of abstract art. A rapprochement with abstract art can be found in cubo-futurism and alogism. A breakthrough to abstraction was the painting by N.S. Goncharova “Emptiness” (1914. Tretyakov Gallery), but this topic was not found further development in the artist's work. Another unrealized aspect of Russian abstraction is the color painting of O.V. Rozanova (see: Non-objective art).

During the same years, the Czech Frantisek Kupka, the French Robert Delaunay and Jacques Villon, the Dutchman Piet Mondrian, and the Americans Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell followed their own paths to pictorial abstraction in these same years. The first abstract spatial structures were counter-reliefs by V.E. Tatlin (1914).

The rejection of isomorphism and an appeal to the spiritual principle gave reason to associate abstract art with theosophy, anthroposophy and even the occult. But the artists themselves did not express such ideas in the first stages of the development of abstract art.

After the First World War, abstract painting gradually gained a dominant position in Europe and became a universal artistic ideology. This is a powerful artistic movement, which in its aspirations goes far beyond the scope of pictorial and plastic tasks and demonstrates the ability to create aesthetic and philosophical systems and solve social problems (for example, Malevich’s “Suprematist city” based on the principles of life-building). In the 1920s, based on his ideology, such research institutes, like Bauhaus or Ginkhuk. Constructivism also grew from abstraction.

The Russian version of abstraction is called non-objective art.

Many principles and techniques of abstract art, which became classics in the twentieth century, are widely used in design, theatrical and decorative arts, cinema, television and computer graphics.

The concept of abstract art has changed over time. Until the 1910s, this term was used in relation to painting, where forms were depicted in a generalized and simplified manner, i.e. "abstract" versus a more detailed or naturalistic depiction. In this sense, the term was mainly applied to decorative arts or to compositions with flattened forms.

But since the 1910s, “abstract” has been used to describe works where a form or composition is depicted from such an angle that the original subject changes almost beyond recognition. Most often, this term denotes a style of art that is based solely on the arrangement of visual elements - shape, color, structure, while it is not at all necessary that they have an initiating image in the material world.

The concept of meaning in abstract art (in both its early and later meanings) is a complex issue that is constantly debated. Abstract forms can also refer to non-visual phenomena such as love, speed or the laws of physics, associating with a derivative entity (“essentialism”), with the imaginary or other way of separating from the detailed, detailed and inessential, random. Despite the lack of a representative subject, in abstract work enormous expression can be accumulated, and semantically rich elements such as rhythm, repetition and color symbolism indicate involvement in specific ideas or events outside the image itself.

Literature:

• M.Seuphor. L'Art abstrait, ses origins, ses premiers maîtres. Paris, 1949;
• M.Brion. L'Art abstract. Paris, 1956; D.Vallier. L'Art abstract. Paris, 1967;
• R.Capon. Introducing Abstract Painting. London, 1973;
• C.Blok. Geschichte der abstrakten Kunst. 1900–1960. Köln, 1975;
• M. Schapiro. Nature of Abstract Art (1937) // M. Schapiro. Modern Art. Selected Papers. New York, 1978;
• Towards a New Art: Essays on the Background to Abstract Painting 1910–1920. Ed. M. Compton. London, 1980;
• The Spiritual in Art. Abstract Painting 1890–1985. Los Angeles County Museum of Arts. 1986/1987;
• Text by M. Tuchman; B. Altshuler. The Avant-Garde in Exhibition. New Art in the 20th Century. New York, 1994;
• Abstraction in Russia. XX century. T. 1–2. State Russian Museum [Catalog] St. Petersburg, 2001;
• Pointlessness and abstraction. Sat. articles. Rep. ed. G.F.Kovalenko. M., 2011;

Abstract painting overcomes the eternal opposition between subject and object. In an abstract painting, as in a painting painted in a realistic style, there must be an object from which an abstraction is created by abstraction. But such a picture abolishes the distance between the object of contemplation and the contemplator himself.

There is an opinion that in real life There is no subject or object, they say, all this is a figment of human imagination. Undoubtedly human perception takes place. A person can see both a delicious apple and, say, a crusty table, but an abstract artist depicts not an object, but the very process of perceiving the object. And since in perception any person, one way or another, is guided by five external senses, then abstract painting is perceived precisely by these internal sensations.

How often people who are far from art do not understand abstract painting, considering it incomprehensible scribbles and a provocation that brings discord into the minds. They mock the creations of authors who do not strive to accurately depict the world.

What is abstract art?

Opening up new opportunities for expressing their own thoughts and feelings, they abandoned the usual techniques, ceasing to copy reality. They believed that this art accustoms a person to philosophical image life. The painters were looking for new language to express the emotions that overwhelmed them, and found it in colorful spots and clean lines that affect not the mind, but the soul.

Became a symbol new era, is a direction that has abandoned forms that are as close as possible to reality. Not understandable to everyone, it gave impetus to the development of cubism and expressionism. The main characteristic of abstract art is non-objectivity, that is, there are no recognizable objects on the canvas, and viewers see something incomprehensible and not subject to logic, beyond the bounds of habitual perception.

The most famous abstract artists and their paintings are a priceless treasure for humanity. Canvases painted in this style express the harmony of shapes, lines, and color spots. Bright combinations have their own idea and meaning, despite the fact that it seems to the viewer that there is nothing in the works except fancy blots. However, in abstraction everything is subject to certain rules of expression.

"Father" of the new style

Founder unique style Wassily Kandinsky is recognized - legendary personality in the art of the 20th century. The Russian painter with his work wanted to make the viewer feel the same as he did. This seems surprising, but the future artist was inspired to a new worldview an important event in the world of physics. The discovery of the decomposition of the atom seriously influenced the development of the most famous abstract artist.

“It turns out that everything can be broken down into separate components, and this sensation resonated in me like the destruction of the whole world,” said Kandinsky, who was an outstanding singer of a time of change. Just as physics discovered the microworld, so painting penetrated the human soul.

Artist and philosopher

Gradually, the famous abstract artist in his work moves away from the detailing of his works and experiments with color. A sensitive philosopher sends light to the very depths human heart and creates canvases with a strong emotional content, where his colors are compared with the notes of a beautiful melody. The first place in the author’s works is not the plot of the canvas, but feelings. Kandinsky himself considered the human soul to be a multi-stringed piano, and compared the artist to a hand that, by pressing a certain key (color combination), sets it into vibration.

A master who gives people hints to understand their creativity is looking for harmony in chaos. He paints canvases where a thin but clear thread can be traced that connects abstraction with reality. For example, in the work "Improvisation 31" (" Sea battle") in the color spots you can guess the images of boats: sailing ships on the canvas resist the elements and rolling waves. So the author tried to tell about the eternal battle of man with the outside world.

American student

Famous abstract artists of the 20th century who worked in America are students of Kandinsky. His work had a huge influence on expressive abstract art. Armenian emigrant Arshile Gorky (Vozdanik Adoyan) created in a new style. He developed special equipment: laid out white canvases on the floor and poured paint from buckets onto them. When it froze, the master scratched lines in it, making something like bas-reliefs.

Gorka's creations are full of vibrant colors. “The Aroma of Apricots in the Fields” is a typical painting where sketches of flowers, fruits, and insects are transformed into a single composition. The viewer feels the pulsation emanating from the work, done in bright orange and rich red tones.

Rotkovich and his unusual technique

When it comes to the most famous abstract artists, one cannot fail to mention Marcus Rothkovich, a Jewish emigrant. A talented student of Gorka influenced the audience with the intensity and depth of colorful membranes: he superimposed two or three color rectangular spaces one on top of the other. And they seemed to pull the person inside so that he would experience catharsis (purification). The creator of the unusual paintings himself recommended viewing them at a distance of at least 45 centimeters. He said that his work is a journey into an unknown world, where the viewer is unlikely to choose to go on his own.

Brilliant Pollock

At the end of the 40s of the last century, one of the most famous abstract artists, Jackson Pollock, invented new technology splashing paint - drip, which became a real sensation. She divided the world into two camps: those who recognized the author’s paintings as genius, and those who called them daubs unworthy of being called art. The creator of unique creations never stretched the canvases onto canvas, but placed them on the wall or floor. He walked around with a jar of paints mixed with sand, gradually plunging into a trance and dancing. It seems that he accidentally spilled a multi-colored liquid, but his every movement was thought out and meaningful: the artist took into account the force of gravity and the absorption of paint by the canvas. The result was an abstract confusion consisting of blots of different sizes and lines. Pollock was dubbed "Jack the Sprinkler" for his invented style.

The most famous abstract artist gave his works not titles, but numbers, so that the viewer had freedom of imagination. "Canvas No. 5", located in private collection, for a long time was hidden from public view. A stir begins around the masterpiece, shrouded in secrecy, and it finally appears at Sotheby’s, instantly becoming the most expensive masterpiece at that time (its cost is $140 million).

Find your formula to understand abstract art

Is there a universal formula that will allow the viewer to perceive abstract art? Perhaps in this case everyone will have to find their own guidelines based on personal experience, internal sensations and a great desire to discover the unknown. If a person wants to discover the secret messages of the authors, he will definitely find them, because it is so tempting to look behind the outer shell and see the idea, which is an important component of abstractionism.

It is difficult to overestimate the revolution in traditional art that famous abstract artists and their paintings produced. They forced society to look at the world in a new way, to see different colors in it, to appreciate unusual shapes and content.

In the last century, the abstract movement became a real breakthrough in the history of art, but it was quite natural - people were always in search of new forms, properties and ideas. But even in our century, this style of art raises many questions. What is abstract art? Let's talk about this further.

Abstract art in painting and art

In style abstractionism the artist uses a visual language of shapes, contours, lines and colors to interpret the subject. This contrasts with traditional art forms, which take a more literary interpretation of the subject - conveying "reality". Abstractionism goes as far as possible from the classical visual arts, as much as possible; is objective world not at all like in real life.

Abstract art challenges the mind of the observer as well as his emotions - to fully appreciate a work of art, the observer must free himself from the need to understand what the artist is trying to say, but must feel the response emotion for himself. All aspects of life lend themselves to interpretation through abstract art - faith, fears, passions, reactions to music or nature, scientific and mathematical calculations, etc.

This movement in art arose in the 20th century, along with cubism, surrealism, dadaism and others, although exact time unknown. The main representatives of the abstract art style in painting are considered to be such artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Delaunay, Kazimir Malevich, Frantisek Kupka and Piet Mondrian. We will talk further about their creativity and important paintings.

Paintings by famous artists: abstract art

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was one of the pioneers of abstract art. He began his search in impressionism, and only then came to the style of abstractionism. In his work, he exploited the relationship between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that embraced both the vision and the emotions of the viewer. He believed that complete abstraction provides scope for deep, transcendent expression, and copying reality only interferes with this process.

Painting was deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract shapes and colors that would transcend physical and cultural boundaries. He saw abstractionism as an ideal visual mode that can express the artist's "inner necessity" and convey human ideas and emotions. He considered himself a prophet whose mission was to share these ideals with the world for the benefit of society.

"Composition IV" (1911)

Hidden in bright colors and clear black lines depict several Cossacks with spears, as well as boats, figures and a castle on top of a hill. Like many paintings from this period, it imagines an apocalyptic battle that will lead to eternal peace.

To facilitate the development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his work On the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduces objects to pictographic symbols. By removing most references to the outside world, Kandinsky expressed his vision in a more universal way, translating the spiritual essence of the subject through all these forms into a visual language. Many of these symbolic figures were repeated and refined in his later works, becoming even more abstract.

Kazimir Malevich

Malevich's ideas about form and meaning in art somehow lead to a concentration on the theory of abstract art style. Malevich worked with different styles of painting, but was most focused on the study of pure geometric shapes (squares, triangles, circles) and their relationship to each other in pictorial space.

Thanks to his contacts in the West, Malevich was able to convey his ideas about painting to artist friends in Europe and the United States, and thus profoundly influence the evolution of modern art.

"Black Square" (1915)

The iconic painting “Black Square” was first shown by Malevich at an exhibition in Petrograd in 1915. This work embodies the theoretical principles of Suprematism developed by Malevich in his essay “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: New Realism in Painting.”

On the canvas in front of the viewer there is an abstract form in the form of a black square drawn on a white background - it is the only element of the composition. Although the painting appears simple, there are elements such as fingerprints and brush strokes visible through the black layers of paint.

For Malevich, the square signifies feelings, and the white signifies emptiness, nothingness. He saw the black square as a god-like presence, an icon, as if it could become a new sacred image for non-figurative art. Even at the exhibition, this painting was placed in the place where an icon is usually placed in a Russian house.

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the Dutch De Stijl movement, is recognized for the purity of his abstractions and methodical practice. He simplified the elements of his paintings quite radically in order to represent what he saw not directly, but figuratively, and to create a clear and universal aesthetic language in his canvases.

In his most famous paintings from the 1920s, Mondrian reduced his forms to lines and rectangles and his palette to its simplest. The use of asymmetrical balance became fundamental in the development of modern art, and his iconic abstract works remain influential in design and are familiar to popular culture today.

"The Gray Tree" (1912)

"The Gray Tree" is an example of Mondrian's early transition to style abstractionism. Three-dimensional wood is reduced to the simplest lines and planes, using just grays and blacks.

This painting is one of a series of works by Mondrian that were created with a more realistic approach, where, for example, trees are represented in a naturalistic manner. While later works became increasingly abstract, for example, the lines of a tree are reduced until the shape of the tree is barely noticeable and secondary to the overall composition of vertical and horizontal lines.

Here you can still see Mondrian's interest in abandoning the structured organization of lines. This step was significant for Mondrian's development of pure abstraction.

Robert Delaunay

Delaunay was one of the earliest artists of the abstract art style. His work influenced the development of this direction, based on the compositional tension that was caused by the opposition of colors. He quickly fell under the neo-impressionist coloristic influence and very closely followed the color scheme of works in the style of abstractionism. He considered color and light to be the main tools with which one can influence the reality of the world.

By 1910, Delaunay made his own contribution to Cubism in the form of two series of paintings depicting cathedrals and the Eiffel Tower, which combined cubic forms, dynamic movement and bright colors. This new way of using color harmony helped distinguish the style from orthodox Cubism, becoming known as Orphism, and immediately influenced European artists. Delaunay’s wife, artist Sonia Turk-Delone, continued to paint in the same style.

"Eiffel Tower" (1911)

Delaunay's main work is dedicated to the Eiffel Tower, the famous symbol of France. This is one of the most impressive of a series of eleven paintings dedicated to the Eiffel Tower between 1909 and 1911. It is painted bright red, which immediately distinguishes it from the grayness of the surrounding city. The impressive size of the canvas further enhances the grandeur of this building. Like a ghost, the tower rises above the surrounding houses, metaphorically shaking the very foundations of the old order.

Delaunay's painting conveys this feeling of boundless optimism, innocence and freshness of a time that has not yet witnessed two world wars.

Frantisek Kupka

František Kupka is a Czechoslovakian artist who paints in the style abstractionism, graduated from the Prague Academy of Arts. As a student, he primarily painted on patriotic themes and wrote historical compositions. His early works were more academic, however, his style evolved over the years and eventually moved into abstract art. Written in a very realistic manner, even his early works contained mystical surreal themes and symbols, which continued when writing abstractions.

Kupka believed that the artist and his work take part in a continuous creative activity, the nature of which is not limited, like an absolute.

“Amorpha. Fugue in two colors" (1907-1908)

Beginning in 1907-1908, Kupka began to paint a series of portraits of a girl holding a ball in her hand, as if she were about to play or dance with it. He then developed more and more schematic images of it, and eventually received a series of completely abstract drawings. They were made in a limited palette of red, blue, black and white.

In 1912, at the Salon d'Automne, one of these abstract works was exhibited publicly for the first time in Paris.

The style of abstractionism does not lose its popularity in painting of the 21st century - lovers of modern art are not averse to decorating their home with such a masterpiece, and works in this style go under the hammer at various auctions for fabulous sums.

The following video will help you learn even more about abstractionism in art: