FROM PALETTE TO CANVAS
A TREVOR JONES RETROSPECTIVE ON NIFTY GATEWAY
24 FEB 2021
24 FEB 2021
A Brief History Of Abstract Art
From the late 19th century's Expressionist and Spiritualist movements with their approaches to painting that sought to express visual sensations and emotional experience over depictions of reality and the early 20th century's pioneering deconstructive nature of Cubism, Abstract Art emerged in Europe with a generation of artists seeking to embrace changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy and the pursuit of 'pure art'.
The artistic centre of Paris in the early 1900's was revolutionised with multicoloured paintings of landscapes and figures from artists such as Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy and their exuberant expressions of colour and imagination. During this period Pablo Picasso was also making his first Cubist paintings based on Cézanne's concept of nature reduced to three primary solids, that of the cube the sphere and the cone. Cubism provided a primary conduit for the evolution of abstraction in art and would go on to be regarded as one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century.
These formative years of abstraction in art saw work created by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian amongst others as well as the growth of art movements such as Dada and Orphism.
During the political tensions of the 1930's a number of artists relocated, forming creative hubs in Paris and London but by the early 1940's and the rise of Nazi Germany many artists had fled to the United States and New York in particular where the main movements of modern art, including abstraction, became represented. The culture and influences of the European artists were absorbed and embraced by the New York painters and within an environment of freedom these influences flourished.
From this evolutionary turning point groups such as the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940's and the New York School of the 1950's and 60's developed and artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Phillip Guston forged new evolutionary paths in abstraction. New York City itself became regarded as the centre of Western modern art continuing on into the 20th century.
"The art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist... it is pure art" - Guillaume Apollinaire.
The artistic centre of Paris in the early 1900's was revolutionised with multicoloured paintings of landscapes and figures from artists such as Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy and their exuberant expressions of colour and imagination. During this period Pablo Picasso was also making his first Cubist paintings based on Cézanne's concept of nature reduced to three primary solids, that of the cube the sphere and the cone. Cubism provided a primary conduit for the evolution of abstraction in art and would go on to be regarded as one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century.
These formative years of abstraction in art saw work created by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian amongst others as well as the growth of art movements such as Dada and Orphism.
During the political tensions of the 1930's a number of artists relocated, forming creative hubs in Paris and London but by the early 1940's and the rise of Nazi Germany many artists had fled to the United States and New York in particular where the main movements of modern art, including abstraction, became represented. The culture and influences of the European artists were absorbed and embraced by the New York painters and within an environment of freedom these influences flourished.
From this evolutionary turning point groups such as the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940's and the New York School of the 1950's and 60's developed and artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Phillip Guston forged new evolutionary paths in abstraction. New York City itself became regarded as the centre of Western modern art continuing on into the 20th century.
"The art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist... it is pure art" - Guillaume Apollinaire.