The most famous abstract artists: definition, direction in art, features of the image and the most famous paintings. Abstract art: definition, history, types, characteristics Section in the process of filling and adjusting Abstractioni

Abstractionism is a relatively young art movement. The year 1910 is officially recognized as the year of its birth, when the artist Wassily Kandinsky exhibited the first canvas in a new technique, painted in watercolor.

Representatives of abstract art take simple and complex forms, lines, planes as the basis for creating their own masterpieces and play with color. What happens in the end has nothing to do with real objects. This is a work that is accessible only to the superconscious through the sensory world of the individual.

For decades after the appearance of the first work in this style, abstractionism has undergone various changes, actively introduced into other avant-garde trends.

(Abstraction by Carol Hein)

Within the framework of abstractionism, artists created numerous paintings, sculptures, and installations. Separate elements have been used and continue to be successfully implemented, including in the interiors of modern premises.

Today, the abstract trend in art is divided into geometric and lyrical abstraction. The geometric direction of abstractionism is characterized by strict and clear lines, stable states. Lyrical abstraction is characterized by free form and demonstration of the dynamics set by the master or artist.

Abstract art in painting

It was with painting that abstractionism began its development. On canvas and paper, he was revealed to the world through the play of color and lines, recreating something that had no analogues in the real world of objects.

(...and a clearer abstraction by Carol Hein)

Bright representatives of abstractionism are:

• Kandinsky;
• Malevich;
• Mondrian.

Later, they had many followers, each of whom made his own artistic contribution, applying new techniques for applying paints and new principles for creating an abstract composition.

(Wassily Vasilyevich Kandinsky "Composition IV")

The founders of the direction, creating their masterpieces on canvas, relied on new scientific and philosophical theories. For example, Kandinsky, justifying his own artistic creations, appealed to the theosophical works of Blavatsky. Mondrian was a representative of neoplasticism and actively used pure lines and colors in his works. His paintings were repeatedly copied by many representatives of the field of painting and art. Malevich was an ardent supporter of the theory of Suprematism. The primacy in the art of painting was given by the master to color.

(Kazimir Malevich "Composition of geometric shapes")

In general, abstractionism in painting turned out to be a twofold direction for ordinary people. One considered such works to be dead ends, the second - they sincerely admired the ideas that the artists put into their creations.

Despite the randomness of lines, shapes and colors, paintings and works of art in the style of abstractionism create a single and holistically perceived composition by the audience.

Directions of art abstractionism

Works in the style of abstractionism are difficult to clearly classify, since this direction has many followers, each of whom contributed his own vision to development. In general, it can be divided according to the type of predominance of lines or techniques. To date, there are:

• color abstractionism. Within the framework of these works, the artists play with colors and shades, placing the emphasis in the works on the perception of them by the mind of the beholder;
• geometric abstractionism. This trend has its own strict characteristic differences. These are clear lines and shapes, the illusion of depth and linear perspectives. Representatives of this trend are Suprematis, neoplasticists;
• expressive abstractionism and tachisme. The emphasis in these branches is not on colors, shapes and lines, but on the technique of applying paint, through which dynamics is set, emotions are conveyed and the unconscious of the artist is reflected, working without any preliminary plan;
• minimalistic abstract art. This trend is closer to the avant-garde. Its essence boils down to the absence of references to any associations. Lines, shapes and colors are used concisely and to a minimum.

The birth of abstractionism as a trend in art was the result of the changes that hovered at the beginning of the last century, associated with numerous new discoveries that began to move humanity forward. Everything new and still incomprehensible needed the same explanation and way out, including through art.

Abstractionism (lat. abstractio- removal, distraction) or non-figurative art- a direction of art that abandoned the representation of forms approximate to reality in painting and sculpture. One of the goals of abstractionism is to achieve “harmonization” by depicting certain color combinations and geometric shapes, causing the viewer to feel the completeness and completeness of the composition. Prominent figures: Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Piet Mondrian.

Story

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

V. Kandinsky created his own type of abstract painting, freeing from any signs of objectivity the spots of the Impressionists and the "wild". Piet Mondrian came to his pointlessness through the geometric stylization of nature, begun by Cezanne and the Cubists. The modernist trends of the 20th century, focused on abstractionism, completely depart from traditional principles, denying realism, but at the same time remain within the framework of art. The history of art with the advent of abstractionism experienced a revolution. But this revolution arose not by chance, but quite naturally, and was predicted by Plato! In his later work Philebus, he wrote about the beauty of lines, surfaces and spatial forms in themselves, independent of any imitation of visible objects, of any mimesis. This kind of geometric beauty, in contrast to the beauty of natural “irregular” forms, according to Plato, is not relative, but unconditional, absolute.

20th century and present

After the 1st World War of 1914-18, the tendencies of abstract art often manifested themselves in individual works by representatives of Dadaism and Surrealism; at the same time, the desire to find application for non-pictorial forms in architecture, decorative art, and design was determined (experiments of the Style group and the Bauhaus). Several groups of abstract art ("Concrete Art", 1930; "Circle and Square", 1930; "Abstraction and Creativity", 1931), uniting artists of various nationalities and trends, arose in the early 30s, mainly in France. However, abstract art was not widespread at that time, and by the mid-30s. the groups broke up. During the years of World War II (1939–45), a school of so-called abstract expressionism arose in the United States (painters J. Pollock, M. Toby etc.), which developed after the war in many countries (under the name of tachisme or “formless art”) and proclaimed as its method “pure mental automatism” and subjective subconscious impulsiveness of creativity, the cult of unexpected color and texture combinations.

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

Another trend in American painting was called "chromatic" or "post-painting" abstractionism. Its representatives to some extent repelled Fauvism and Post-Impressionism. Rigid style, emphasized sharp outlines of works E. Kelly, J. Jungerman, F. Stella gradually gave way to painting of a contemplative melancholic warehouse. In the 1970s and 1980s, American painting returned to figurative art. Moreover, such an extreme manifestation of it as photorealism has become widespread. Most art historians agree that the 70s is 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, abstract art has not disappeared either.

Paintings, works of "non-fine" art were created as before, since the return to realism in the United States did not overcome abstractionism as such, but its canonization, the ban on figurative art, which was identified primarily with our social realism, and therefore could not be considered odious in a "free democratic" society, a ban on "low" genres, on the social functions of art. At the same time, the style of abstract painting acquired a certain softness, which it lacked before - the streamlining of volumes, the blurring of contours, the 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 of modern abstractionism. In creativity there can be nothing frozen, final, since this would be death for him. But no matter what paths abstractionism takes, no matter what transformations it undergoes, its essence always remains unchanged. It lies in the fact that abstractionism in fine art is the most accessible and noble way to capture personal being, 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 mainly on clearly defined configurations (Malevich, Mondrian), and lyrical abstraction, in which the composition is organized from freely flowing forms (Kandinsky). Also in abstractionism there are several other major independent trends.

Cubism

An avant-garde trend in the visual arts, which originated at the beginning of the 20th century and is characterized by the use of emphatically conditional geometric shapes, the desire to “split” real objects into stereometric primitives.

Rayonism (Luchism)

Direction 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 "crossing of the reflected rays of various objects" is characteristic, since a person actually perceives not the object itself, but "the sum of the rays coming from the light source, reflected from the object."

neoplasticism

The designation of the direction of abstract art, which existed in 1917-1928. in Holland and united artists grouped around the magazine "De Stijl" ("Style"). Characterized by clear rectangular shapes in architecture and abstract painting in the layout of large rectangular planes, painted in the primary colors of the spectrum.

Orphism

Direction in French painting of the 1910s. Artists-orphists 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 intersection of curvilinear surfaces.

Suprematism

Direction in avant-garde art, founded in the 1910s. Malevich. It was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric outlines. The combination of multi-colored geometric figures forms balanced asymmetric Suprematist compositions permeated with internal movement.

Tachisme

The trend in Western European abstractionism of the 1950s and 60s, which was most widespread in the USA. It is a 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 hand movements without a premeditated plan.

abstract expressionism

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

Abstractionism in the interior

Recently, abstract art has begun to move from the paintings of artists to the cozy interior of the house, updating it favorably. The minimalist style with the use of clear forms, sometimes quite unusual, makes the room unusual and interesting. But it's easy to go overboard with color. Consider the combination of orange in such an interior style.

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

The combination of orange and blue colors is detrimental to any room, if it does not apply to the nursery. If you choose not bright shades, then they will successfully harmonize with each other, add mood, and will not adversely affect even hyperactive children.

Orange goes well with green, creating the effect of a tangerine tree and a chocolate tint. Brown is a color that varies from warm to cold, so it perfectly normalizes the overall temperature of the room. In addition, this combination of colors is suitable for the kitchen and living room, where you need to create an atmosphere, but not overload the interior. Having decorated the walls in white and chocolate colors, you can safely put an orange chair or hang a bright picture with a rich tangerine color. While you are in such a room, you will have a great mood and a 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 audience. He believed that complete abstraction gives room 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 need" and convey human ideas and emotions. He considered himself a prophet whose mission is 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 a hilltop. As in many paintings from this period, it represents an apocalyptic battle that will lead to eternal peace.

In order to facilitate the development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his On the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduces objects to pictographic symbols. By removing most of the 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 work, becoming even more abstract.

Kazimir Malevich

Malevich's ideas about form and meaning in art somehow lead to a concentration on the theory of style abstractionism. Malevich worked with different styles in painting, but most of all he was focused on the study of pure geometric shapes (squares, triangles, circles) and their relationship to each other in the pictorial space. Through 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 contemporary 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 is an abstract form drawn on a white background in the form of a black square - it is the only element of the composition. Even though the painting seems simple, there are elements such as fingerprints, brush strokes showing through the black layers of paint.

For Malevich, the square means feelings, and the white one means emptiness, nothing. He saw the black square as a godlike presence, an icon, as if it could become a new sacred image for non-objective art. Even at the exhibition, this picture 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 rather radically simplified the elements of his paintings in order to display 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 reduces forms to lines and rectangles, and the palette to the simplest. The use of asymmetric balance became fundamental to the development of contemporary art, and his iconic abstract works continue to be influential in design and are familiar to popular culture to this day.

The "gray tree" is an example of Mondrian's early transition to the style abstractionism. The 3D tree is reduced to the simplest lines and planes, using only grays and blacks.

This painting is one of a series of works by Mondrian that took a more realistic approach, where, for example, trees are presented in a naturalistic way. While later pieces became increasingly abstract, for example, the lines of the tree are reduced until the shape of the tree is barely visible 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 move was significant for the development of Mondrian's pure abstraction.

Robert Delaunay

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

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

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 dullness 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, figuratively 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 Czechoslovak 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 evolved into abstract art. Written in a very realistic manner, even his early works contained mystical surreal themes and symbols, which was preserved 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 was about to play or dance with it. He then developed increasingly schematic representations of her, and eventually produced 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 first publicly exhibited in Paris.

Modern Abstractionists

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

German artist David Schnel(David Schnell) likes to roam places that used to be dominated by nature, and now they are heaped with buildings of people - from playgrounds to factories and factories. Memories of these walks give birth to his bright abstract landscapes. Giving free rein to his imagination and memory, rather than photographs and videos, David Schnell creates paintings that resemble computer virtual reality or illustrations for science fiction books.

Creating her large-scale abstract paintings, the American artist Christine Baker(Kristin Baker) draws inspiration from the history of art and racing Nascar and Formula 1. At first, she gives volume to her work, applying several layers of acrylic paint and tape the silhouettes. Kristin then carefully peels it off, which reveals the underlying layers of paint and makes the surface of her paintings look like a multi-layered, multi-coloured collage. At the very last stage of the work, she scrapes off all the bumps, making her paintings look like they feel like an x-ray.

In her work, the Greek-born artist from Brooklyn, New York, Elena Anagnos(Eleanna Anagnos) explores aspects of everyday life that are often overlooked by people. In the course of 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, an American artist Sara Spitler(Sarah Spitler) seeks to reflect chaos, disaster, imbalance and disorder in her work. She is attracted to these concepts, as they are beyond the control of a person. Therefore, their destructive power makes the abstract works of Sarah Spitler powerful, energetic and exciting. Besides. the resulting image on the canvas of ink, acrylic paints, graphite pencils and enamel emphasizes the ephemeral nature and relativity of what is happening around.

Drawing inspiration from the field of architecture, the artist from Vancouver, Canada, Jeff Dapner(Jeff Depner) creates layered abstract paintings made up of geometric shapes. In the artistic "chaos" he created, Jeff seeks harmony in color, form and composition. Each of the elements in his paintings are connected to each other and lead to the following: "My work explores the compositional structure [of a painting] through the relationships of colors in a chosen palette…". According to the artist, his paintings are "abstract signs" that should take viewers to a new, unconscious level.

direction

Abstractionism (Latin abstractio - removal, distraction) or non-figurative art is a direction of art that has abandoned the representation of forms close to reality in painting and sculpture. One of the goals of abstractionism is to achieve "harmonization" by depicting certain color combinations and geometric shapes, causing the viewer to feel the completeness and completeness of the composition. Prominent figures: Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Piet Mondrian.

The first abstract painting was painted by Wassily Kandinsky in 1910. Currently, it is in the National Museum of Georgia - thus he opened a new page in world painting - abstractionism, raising painting to music.

In the painting of Russia of the 20th century, the main representatives of abstract art were Wassily Kandinsky (who completed the transition to his abstract compositions in Germany), Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, who founded “ Rayonism” in 1910-1912, the creator of Suprematism as a new type of creativity Kazimir Malevich, the author of “Black square" and Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, whose work is distinguished, among other things, by an unprecedentedly wide range of directions of the abstract method applied in his works (a number of them, including the "graffiti style", the artist used the first among not only domestic, but also foreign masters).

A trend related to abstractionism is cubism, which seeks to depict real objects with a multitude of intersecting planes, creating the image of some rectilinear figures that reproduce living nature. Some of the most notable examples of Cubism were the early work of Pablo Picasso.

In 1910-1915 painters in Russia, Western Europe and the USA began to create abstract works of art; among the first abstractionists, researchers name Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. The year of birth of non-objective art is considered to be 1910, when in Germany, in Murnau, Kandinsky wrote his first abstract composition. The aesthetic concepts of the first abstractionists assumed that artistic creativity reflects the laws of the universe, hidden behind external, superficial phenomena of reality. These patterns, intuitively comprehended by the artist, were expressed through the ratio of abstract forms (color spots, lines, volumes, geometric shapes) in an abstract work. In 1911, in Munich, Kandinsky published the book On the Spiritual in Art, which became famous, in which he reflected on the possibility of embodying the internally necessary, the spiritual, as opposed to the external, accidental. The "logical justification" of Kandinsky's abstractions was based on the study of the theosophical and anthroposophical works of Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner. In the aesthetic concept of Piet Mondrian, the primary elements of form were the primary oppositions: horizontal - vertical, line - plane, color - non-color. In the theory of Robert Delaunay, in contrast to the concepts of Kandinsky and Mondrian, idealistic metaphysics was rejected; The main task of abstractionism for the artist was to study the dynamic qualities of color and other properties of the artistic language (the direction founded by Delaunay was called Orphism). The creator of "Rayonism" Mikhail Larionov depicted "radiation of reflected light; color dust.

Born in the early 1910s, abstract art developed rapidly, manifesting itself in many areas of avant-garde art in the first half of the 20th century. The ideas of abstractionism are reflected in the works of expressionists (Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Marc), cubists (Fernand Léger), Dadaists (Jean Arp), surrealists (Joan Miro), Italian futurists (Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla,

For me, the style of abstract art is primarily a confrontation with the logic of civilization. The whole history of civilization of the last century is built on formulas, algorithms, principles, equations and rules. However, it is human nature to strive for balance and harmony. In this connection, at the dawn of the century of the scientific and technological revolution, such an art movement appears that does not obey the classical canons of drawing, but, on the contrary, serves as its goal to give freedom to the unconscious and chaotic, at first glance devoid of meaning, but thereby giving a person the opportunity to free himself from the influence of norms and dogmas and maintain internal harmony.

Abstractionism(from the Latin abstractus - remote, abstract) is a very broad trend in the art of the 20th century, which arose in the early 1910s in several European countries. Abstractionism is characterized by the use of exclusively formal elements to display reality, where imitation or an accurate display of reality was not an end in itself.

The founders of abstractionism are Russian artists and Dutchman Piet Mondrian, Frenchman Robert Delaunay and Czech Frantisek Kupka. Their method of drawing was based on the desire for "harmonization", the creation of certain color combinations and geometric shapes in order to evoke various associations in the contemplator.

In abstractionism, two clear directions can be distinguished: geometric abstraction, based mainly on clearly defined configurations (Malevich, Mondrian), and lyrical abstraction, in which the composition is organized from freely flowing forms (Kandinsky). Also in abstractionism there are several other major independent trends.

Cubism— an avant-garde trend in the visual arts, which originated at the beginning of the 20th century and is characterized by the use of emphatically conditional geometric forms, the desire to “split” real objects into stereometric primitives.

Rayonism (Luchism)- a trend 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 "crossing of the reflected rays of various objects" is characteristic, since a person actually perceives not the object itself, but "the sum of the rays coming from the light source, reflected from the object."

neoplasticism- designation of the direction of abstract art, which existed in 1917-1928. in Holland and united artists grouped around the magazine "De Stijl" ("Style"). Characterized by clear rectangular shapes in architecture and abstract painting in the layout of large rectangular planes, painted in the primary colors of the spectrum.

Orphism- a trend in French painting of the 1910s. Artists-orphists 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 intersection of curvilinear surfaces.

Suprematism- a direction in avant-garde art, founded in the 1910s. Malevich. It was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric outlines. The combination of multi-colored geometric figures forms balanced asymmetric Suprematist compositions permeated with internal movement.

Tachisme- a trend in Western European abstractionism of the 1950s and 60s, which was most widespread in the United States. It is a 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 hand movements without a premeditated plan.

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

One of the main trends in avant-garde art. The main principle of abstract art is the refusal to imitate the visible reality and operate with its elements in the process of creating a work. The object of art instead of the realities of the surrounding world becomes the tools of artistic creativity - color, line, form. The plot is replaced by a plastic idea. The role of the associative principle in the artistic process increases many times, and it also becomes possible to express the feelings and moods of the creator in abstracted images, cleared of the outer shell, which are able to concentrate the spiritual principle of phenomena and be its bearers (theoretical works of V.V. Kandinsky).

Random elements of abstraction can be identified in world art throughout its 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 separate elements. Fauvism consciously developed this trend, "revealing" the 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”), French cubists (especially Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger) and Italian futurists (Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini) also moved along this path. . But none of them could or did not want to overcome the border of figurativeness. “We admit, however, that some reminder of existing forms should not be completely banished, at least at the present time” (A. Glaze, J. Metzinger. On Cubism. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 14).

The first abstract works appeared in the late 1900s - early 1910s in the work of Kandinsky while working on the text "On the Spiritual in Art", and his "Picture with a Circle" (1911. NMG) is considered the first abstract painting. At this time, he says:<...>only that form is correct, which<...>materializes the content accordingly. All sorts of secondary 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 form - the embodiment of content. Form is a material expression of abstract content” (Content and form. 1910 // Kandinsky 2001. Vol. 1. P. 84).

At an early stage, abstract art in the person of Kandinsky absolutized color. In the study of color, practical and theoretical, Kandinsky developed the doctrine of color by 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 were engaged in color theory) .

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

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

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

After the First World War, abstract painting gradually gains a dominant position in Europe and becomes a universal artistic ideology. This is a powerful artistic movement, which in its aspirations goes far beyond the limits 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, on the basis of his ideology, such research institutes as the Bauhaus or Ginhuk arose. Constructivism also grew out of abstraction.

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

Many of the principles and techniques of abstract art that became classics in the 20th century are widely used in design, theatrical and decorative arts, film, 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 way, i.e. "abstract", as compared to a more detailed or naturalistic depiction. In this sense, the term was mainly applied to decorative art or flattened compositions.

But since the 1910s, “abstract” refers to works where the 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 - shapes, colors, structures, and 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 meanings, earlier and later) 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 an imaginary or otherwise way of separating from the detailed, detailed and non-essential, random. Despite the absence of a representative subject, a huge expression can accumulate in an abstract work, and semantically filled 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. block. Geschichte der abstrakten Kunst. 1900–1960 Koln, 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. Timing [Catalogue] St. Petersburg, 2001;
• Non-objectivity and abstraction. Sat. articles. Rep. ed. G.F. Kovalenko. M., 2011.;