Movements in painting :abstract art

Published on : 01 April 20213 min reading time
Abstract art is an art that is able to avoid the need for a model and to free itself from visual reality and plastic creation. The definition of abstract art does not depend only on its history. This art uses a formal language, linear, pictorial to expose a composition independent to the optical reference.

What is abstract art?

Abstract art came out of the imagination of three painters almost at the same time. These artists are Vassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevitch. Abstract art depicts forms that do not represent objects of the outside world. In plastic arts, abstract art is a visual language born in the early twentieth century. This term also includes cubism or futurism.  In particular, It revolutionized painting and sculpture, and also influenced architecture, literature and music. It represents what we know about an object rather than what we see.

Appearance of abstract art

The painter Vassily Kandinsky is considered the founder of abstract art. According to the philosopher Michel Henry: “Kandinsky calls abstract the content that painting must express, which is this invisible life that is ourselves. ”Abstract art does not represent the visible , sensitive world which uses the material, the line, the color for itself. We can situate its origin around 1913.  The appearance of abstract art began in Europe and had gradually spread to the United States. The movement experienced a meteoric rise in the twentieth century. It derives from the popularity of quantum physics, which challenges the notion of reality. The latter simply no longer depends on our five senses. In the cultural and artistic field, the conception depends mainly on the expression of one’ s emotion and one’ s feeling.

Kandinsky, the pioneer

Abstract art was born from the abstraction of Kandinsky. Abstraction indicates a starting point, a new representation of reality and imagery in art. Four periods mark the history of this abstract art: in the year 1910 to 1920; its creative vitality appears from the decomposition of the characterized art of Kandinsky’s abstraction, Mondrian’s neoplasticism and Malevitch’s suprematism. Between 1920 and 1930, a new form of abstraction appeared in Europe. After the war of 1945, abstract art became a worldwide phenomenon from which emerged avant-garde movements: optical art, tachism, gestural painting, calligraphy, informal art and Minimal Art. At the end of the seventies, the crisis of the abstraction bursts. Lyrical abstraction is generally defined as the abstraction of Kandinsky expressly translating emotion.

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