Abstractionism

Brian Kingsley & Olivia Lewis

What is abstract art?

•Abstract art uses color, lines, and shapes to create a visual language

•It does not necessarily have to represent real world things

•Abstract art can deviate from reality slightly, partially, or fully

•Abstraction means to withdraw part of something in order to consider it separately.

•The artist can start with a real world object and abstract elements from it, arriving at a more or less simplified form of the object

Influences on Abstractionism

•Primarily influenced by Fauvism and Cubism of the early 20th

century

•Fauvism’s use of bright colors as a language

•Cubism’s distortion of reality

On White IIWassily Kandinsky

Additional Influences

•Artists wanted to create a movement which would capture fundamental changes in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies

•Philosophy

•Technology

Science

•Reflection of society at the time

Key Abstract Artists

•Wassily Kandinsky

•Kasimir Malevich

•Piet Mondrian

Wassily Kandinsky

• Born December 16, 1866

• One of the first creators of pure abstraction

Inspiration

• Color

• Sound

• MUSIC

Background

• Kandinsky learned from multiple sources.

– Composing music

– Natural colors

– Other artists

• Fauvism had often appeared in the beginning of his work.

• “ Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

Blue rider (1903)

Blue rider period

• Kandinsky's paintings from this period are large, expressive

colored masses evaluated independently from forms and lines

Composition VI Composition VII