When was abstract art introduced

In the aftermath of the Second World War, this new style literally invaded the artistic landscape. Figures such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning made their marks and are still among the most sought after on the market today. Even with Abstract Expressionism, several different terms are used depending on the artist. Pollock, for example, represents the action painting. This style is characterized by the vigorous movements of the painter.

Here, the physical act of the painter is at the center of the artistic process, and not the subject of the painting. Colorfield-painting large areas of vibrant color is carried by artists such as Rothko Clyfford Still, advocating an empowerment of subjectless color. From the s onwards, two main new trends emerged: Optical Art or Op-art and Minimalism.

The Hungarian Victor Vasarely is the father of Op-art, an art which is interested in optical effects. Ultimately they create visual illusions for the spectator. Their motto was economizing resources. Art is reduced to a simple structure which is often geometric but always abstract. If Kandinsky, Malevitch and Mondrian are considered founders of abstract art, the history remains surrounded by shadows, sometimes becoming clearer with time.

One of the most influential pioneers of concrete art during the period , he developed his precise geometric style as a counter-statement to the emotional chaos and uncertainty of the first half of the twentieth century. Involved with the abstract group Cercle et Carre , as well as the Abstraction-Creation Group , he moved to New York in , and was allegedly the first painter to work to gramaphone music.

Van Doesburg was less dogmatic, introducing a more relaxed form of Neo-Plasticism, called Elementarism. He was also responsible, in , for coining the term "Concrete Art". Sadly he died in , but his ideas were continued not only by students of the Bauhaus design school where he had lectured , but also by the Abstraction-Creation group - led by the Belgian artist Georges Vantongerloo and the French painters Jean Helion and Auguste Herbin The Swiss ex-Bauhaus architect, sculptor and designer Max Bill was another follower who helped to promote the genre in Switzerland, Italy, Argentina and Brazil.

Surrealist and Organic Abstraction. In parallel with the development of geometric-style concretism, during the s and s, exponents of Surrealism began to produce a range of fantasy-like, quasi-naturalistic images.

Jean Arp was also an active sculptor who specialized in Organic Abstraction, as did the English sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth See: Modern British Sculpture A number of European abstract artists later sought sanctuary in America, where they encountered and influenced a new generation of indigenous abstract painters.

As it happened, despite the controversy surrounding New York's Armory Show in , the city was developing a keen interest in abstraction. Note: For two collectors of abstract painting and sculpture of the first half of the 20th century, see: Solomon Guggenheim and Peggy Guggenheim Note: For avant-garde abstraction in Britain c.

Although post-war European artists maintained their interest in abstract art through the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in Paris, by the centre of modern art had shifted to New York, where the avant-garde was represented by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism.

The next generation included painters such as Robert Motherwell. The name of the movement was coined by Robert Coates, art critic of the New Yorker. Abstract Expressionist Painting remains a vague term - often confusingly applied to artists who are neither truly abstract, nor expressionist - which describes a form of abstract painting non-figurative, non-naturalistic in which colour takes precedence over shape; the latter being no longer geometric.

Early works in this style typically filled large scale canvases, whose size was designed to overwhelm spectators and draw them into another world. The preoccupation of abstract expressionists with visual effects, especially the impact of colour, was a reflection of their main goal - to involve and explore basic human emotions. Thus an abstract expressionist painting is best felt intuitively rather than understood: the question posed being typically: 'what does it make you feel?

It must be emphasized that this was a wide movement, encompassing differing styles, including as mentioned works that were either semi- or non-abstract, as well as those characterized by the way paint was applied, such as 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 Woman , Metropolitan Museum of Art by Willem de Kooning and Pasiphae , Metropolitan by Jackson Pollock.

The fact that it was the first major art movement born in the USA, gave it added weight and significance: at least in the minds of critics. Later, Abstract Expressionism spawned a number of individual styles under the umbrella of Post-painterly abstraction , an anti-gesturalist trend. Abstract Expressionism also provoked avant-garde responses from several other artists including Cy Twombly , whose calligraphic scribbling is part-drawing, part-graffiti; and the Californian abstract sculptor Mark Di Suvero b.

In Europe, a new art movement known as Art Informel emerged during the late s. Seen as 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 as the French answer to American Abstract Expressionism.

A key influence was the avant-garde American artist Mark Tobey , whose all-over calligraphic painting style anticipated that of Pollock. Nieuwenhuys Pol Bury was also a member, but in he quit painting to explore kinetic sculpture. One of the most distinct styles of geometric abstract painting to emerge from the modernist era, was the Op-Art movement an abbreviation of 'optical art' whose hallmark was the engagement of the eye, by means of complex, often monochromatic, geometric patterns, to cause it to see colours and shapes that were not actually there.

Leading members included the Hungarian painter and graphic designer Victor Vasarely , and the English painter Bridget Riley b. The movement disappeared by the early s. Postmodernist Abstraction. Since the start of postmodernism since the mids contemporary art has tended to fragment into smaller, more 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 school, a back-to-basics style of geometric abstraction exemplified by postmodernist artists like sculptors Donald Judd , Sol LeWitt , Robert Morris b. Another important minimalist sculptor is Richard Serra b.

In part a reaction against the austerity of minimalism, Neo-Expressionism was mainly a figurative movement which emerged from the early s onwards. However, it also included a number of outstanding abstract painters such as the Englishman Winner Howard Hodgkin b. Among several other internationally acclaimed abstract artists who achieved recognition during the s and s, is the British sculptor Anish Kapoor b.

Rothko, Pollock, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Newman, and Baziotes all looked to ancient or primitive cultures for expression. Their early works feature pictographic and biomorphic elements transformed into personal code.

Jungian psychology was compelling, too, in its assertion of the collective unconscious. Directness of expression was paramount, best achieved through lack of premeditation. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is critical. Mature Abstract Expressionism: Gesture In , Pollock developed a radical new technique, pouring and dripping thinned paint onto raw canvas laid on the ground instead of traditional methods of painting in which pigment is applied by brush to primed, stretched canvas positioned on an easel.

The paintings were entirely nonobjective. In their subject matter or seeming lack of one , scale huge , and technique no brush, no stretcher bars, no easel , the works were shocking to many viewers. De Kooning, too, was developing his own version of a highly charged, gestural style, alternating between abstract work and powerful iconic figurative images. Other colleagues, including Krasner and Kline, were equally engaged in creating an art of dynamic gesture in which every inch of a picture is fully charged.

For Abstract Expressionists, the authenticity or value of a work lay in its directness and immediacy of expression. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.

Rothko, Newman, and Still, for instance, created art based on simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields. The impulse was, in general, reflective and cerebral, with pictorial means simplified in order to create a kind of elemental impact. Mondrian called his approach neo-plasticism. Mondrian had neo-plasticism, Russian artist Kazimir Malevich preferred the term suprematism for his abstract artworks.

Although separated geographically, Mondrian and Malevich were startlingly similar. In the year , trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square. Matisse's collage The Snail , seems to display the key qualities of abstract art as defined by by Malevich and Mondrian, suggesting that Matisse was a late convert to the movement.

We see bold colours, geometric shapes and no obvious reference to the real world. The geometric pattern suggests a snail's shell, going against the ideas of strict abstraction set out by Malevich and Mondrian. The Snail may not be radically abstract, but the technique that Matisse used to make this and similar works is groundbreaking. The Snail is one of Matisse's cut outs — made from shapes cut out of painted paper.

Following the diversion through Matisse, an artist very definitely in tune with abstraction was Marlow Moss. Although she is written off by some as an imitator of the father of neo-plasticism, it could be argued that the influence was reciprocal. Her work from the period following her discovery of Mondrian shows his influence, but it was Moss who first introduced twin lines into her gridded compositions in Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use ….