Amazing Abstracts

The emergence of abstract art might have been the logical consequence of an artistic evolution that had been set in motion by earlier artists, but it nevertheless provided a very significant shift in the art world. Although if Impressionism, post-Impressionism and Fauvism had profoundly changed the way the real world was represented during the 19th century, their looser approach to depicting reality was pushed aside by artists in the 20th century who decided that art no longer had to bear any direct relation to the exterior world and dropped figurative art completely.

In 1910, abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art. In this essay, he explained that each element in a painting should have a symbolic dimension, and he rejected the need to formally identify forms and shapes. For him, the viewer's feelings could be triggered without resorting to the figurative or a recognisable image: this idea gave birth to abstract art. This break with figurative art sparked an artistic revolution and simultaneously followed by other pioneers of the movement: Malevich, Mondrian and Kupka.

Each of these four artists proposed a new way of painting, creating their own language. Whereas Kandinsky's shapes and coloured lines sought to provoke the viewer's sensitivity and emotion, Malevich favoured monochromatic paintings, the first ones in contemporary art. Mondrian used his knowledge in geometry and mathematics to organise primary coloured-squares on white canvases, and Kupka chose to capture movement with graphic shapes and adept use of colour. The directions taken by these four artists created the foundations of abstract art. There were two main branches of abstract art at that time: lyrical abstraction, associated with Kandinsky, and geometric abstraction, which was Mondrian's legacy. Other variations of abstract art have emerged from these two main categories: among the most famous ones are Guy de Rougemont's decorative abstraction, Victor Vasarely's optical art or “Op art" and the minimalist art of Piero Manzoni and Sol LeWitt.

Abstract artworks can be focussed on drawing out our emotions or instead appealing to our intellect. Abstract painting does not “represent" anything; rather, it invites us to reflect. The viewer apprehends an abstract piece in a different state of mind than a figurative one: we are free to use our imagination since the artwork's meaning often depends on our own interpretation of it. Abstract art is one of the core art movements of contemporary art. Many contemporary artists today favour abstraction over realism, not only in the discipline of abstract painting but also abstract sculpture and abstract photography. In this selection, Artsper helps you get an understanding of the variety of contemporary abstract art being produced today.