Geometric abstraction
also: Geometric abstract art
Geometric abstraction is abstract art organized around geometric form: shapes and lines, sometimes placed in shallow non-illusionistic space, combined into compositions that refer to nothing outside themselves. The approach was popularized by the early twentieth-century avant-gardes - Suprematism and Constructivism in Russia, De Stijl in the Netherlands, the color-orbit painting of Kupka and the Delaunays in Paris - and its motifs echo far older traditions, from Islamic geometric pattern to Greek ornament. Critics have prized it as the purest test of painting's flatness: because it refuses illusion, everything rests on proportion, rhythm, and the balance of color and line. Geometric abstraction has never gone away, recurring in Concrete art, hard-edge painting, Op art, Minimalism, and contemporary digital work.
Defining characteristics
- Elemental geometric forms: circles, squares, triangles, grids, and parallel lines
- Non-objective compositions with no reference to visible objects
- Emphasis on the flat picture plane; space is ordered, not illusionistic
- Precise, often hard-edged execution with flatly applied color
- Proportion, rhythm, and mathematical or rule-based construction
- A cool, controlled surface opposed to expressive brushwork
Key figures
- František Kupka (1871-1957) — Painted one of the first fully abstract geometric pictures (Amorpha, 1912)
- Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) — Founded Suprematism, floating squares and circles in empty white space
- Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) — Built his neoplastic grids of black lines and primary color
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) — Carried geometric abstraction into dance, textiles, and design
- Max Bill (1908-1994) — Concrete artist who argued for an art developed from mathematical thinking
Example works
- Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colors — František Kupka (1912)
- Black Square — Kazimir Malevich (1915)
- Broadway Boogie-Woogie — Piet Mondrian (1942-1943)
Sources
- Geometric abstraction - Wikipedia encyclopedia