Abstract art facts for kids

Robert Delaunay, 1912–13, Le Premier Disque, 134 cm (52.7 in.), private collection

Abstract art is modern art which does not represent images of our everyday world. It has color, lines, and shapes (form), but they are not meant to represent objects or living things. Often the artists were influenced by ideas and philosophies of abstraction.

Fugue, Kandinsky 1914

Abstract art is found in painting and in sculpture. There are also many works of art that are partly abstract, and partly representational (representing real things). Many artists work in abstract and other types of modern art.

Purely abstract art is a 20th-century invention. It grew out of the earlier forms of modern art, but it is perhaps the one movement that is modern. It has no roots in earlier art (as we use the term today).

Xdx, by Manierre Dawson. Brooklyn Museum dates it as about 1910.

Josef Albers art on a postage stamp.

Early years

Kazimir Malevich, 1915.

One of the first to achieve complete abstract paintings was Kazimir Malevich, who presented a completely black square in 1913. He was a Suprematist, part of an art movement based on simple geometrical shapes. Art based on geometry is a kind of geometric abstraction. Wassily Kandinsky painted a famous work Composition VII in 1913, which was completely abstract and very complex.

The case of Manierre Dawson, an American from Chicago, is very interesting. During a tour of Europe in 1910, he started painting true abstract works. Back in the United States, he became convinced that he could not earn a living in art and became a farmer. He was forgotten until a rediscovery in 1963. He may have been the first person to paint a completely abstract work.

There are many hundreds of other artists who painted abstracts. Piet Mondrian and the sculptor Henry Moore deserve mention for their wide influence on other artists.

Abstract expressionism

After World War II, abstract art became a more common form of art in the United States, with some outstanding artists. Immigrants such as Mondrian, Max Ernst, and Mark Rothko, and native-born Americans such as Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock became well-known names.

Abstract expressionism is the name given to the art movement after World War II. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence. It made New York City the new center of art in the western world. Paris was the center of art before World war II. The term was used in 1919 but is more widely used for American work of the 1940s to 1960s. Russian artist Kandinsky is an abstract expressionist.

Technically, an important predecessor was surrealism, with its Freudian emphasis on dreams, and on spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a method of using spontaneity. It was new and brought into play several factors:

• Action: movements, how the artist worked.
• Automatism and the unconscious: the work was planned, but details were not.

"At a certain moment, the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event." -Harold Rosenberg

Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics. The artists use large canvases, sometimes very large. There is an "all-over" approach: the whole canvas is treated with equal importance, as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges.

Five things to know

According to the Royal Academy, there are five things we should know about abstract expressionism:

1. "It was the product of an extraordinary time:" a common experience of artists living in 1940s New York.
2. "It took scale to new levels:" the artworks were very large.
3. "It made the viewer part of the art." This one is not everyone's experience.
4. "It resisted traditional confines." For example, the art had an all-over composition instead of a central focal point.
5. "Its artists were close but independent." Each had his unique style.

Action painting

Paintings like Jackson Pollock's express the actions of the painter.

Color field painting

Color field paintings are mainly of colored shapes of a geometric kind. Examples: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Josef Albers.

Interesting facts about abstract art

• Abstract art began to be noticed in the 1900s, especially in New York.
• Abstract art does not represent real things.
• It uses colors, lines, and shapes to make images that express feelings.
• The art is usually large in size.
• Abstract art has lines and figures everywhere, so the eye doesn't focus on one particular point in the piece, like in traditional art.
• Abstract artists could usually be identified by their style of painting or sculpture.

Images for kids

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  A hilya, a decorated description of Muhammad’s physical appearance, dating to the 19th century.

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  Mountain market, clearing Mist, Yu Jian, China

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  František Kupka, Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912, oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm, Narodni Galerie, Prague. Published in Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.

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  Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1923, The Russian Museum

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  Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

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  A 1939–1942 oil on canvas painting by Piet Mondrian titled Composition No. 10. Responding to it, fellow De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg suggested a link between non-representational works of art and ideals of peace and spirituality.

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  Albert Gleizes, 1910–1912, Les Arbres (The Trees), oil on canvas, 41 × 27 cm. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme", 1912

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  Arthur Dove, 1911–12, Based on Leaf Forms and Spaces, pastel on unidentified support. Now lost

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  Francis Picabia, 1912, Tarentelle, oil on canvas, 73.6 × 92.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme"

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  Wassily Kandinsky, 1912, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), oil on canvas, 120.3 × 140.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show

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  Pablo Picasso, 1913–14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 × 33 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

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  Henri Matisse, 1914, French Window at Collioure, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

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  Hilma af Klint, Svanen (The Swan), No. 17, Group IX, Series SUW, October 1914–March 1915. This abstract work was never exhibited during af Klint's lifetime.

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  Theo van Doesburg, Neo-Plasticism: 1917, Composition VII (The Three Graces)

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  Fernand Léger 1919, The Railway Crossing, oil on canvas, 53.8 × 64.8 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago

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  Joseph Csaky, Deux figures, 1920, relief, limestone, polychrome, 80 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

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  Albert Gleizes, 1921, Composition bleu et jaune (Composition jaune), oil on canvas, 200.5 × 110 cm

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  Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray, 1921, Art Institute of Chicago

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  Paul Klee, Fire in the Evening, 1929

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  Otto Gustaf Carlsund, Rapid (1930), a Concrete Art restaurant mural, Stockholm

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  Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York

See also

In Spanish: Arte abstracto para niños