THE WORLD OF FANTASY - ABSTRACT PAINTING by Anant Kumar

Abstract Painting

Abstract painting is said to be one of the purest forms of expression since it allows the artist to speak visually without the constraints of objective reality's forms. Many movements, such as German Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism, are represented in abstract painting.
In Europe throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, abstract paintings arose as a departure from classical and traditional academic painting. Many famous artists before this time painted using classical realism techniques, which included accurate perspective, shading, and other techniques to portray historical situations and subject matter. At the turn of the century, several artists defied conventional wisdom and began to make work that did not always refer to real-world items. The topics of this new method of painting were deemed "pure art" because they were wholly created by the artists, rather than being imitated or referenced in the real world. Abstract painters experimented with new techniques such as employing vibrant yet arbitrary colors, rebuilding shapes, and rejecting accurate three-dimensional perspectives, emphasizing an artwork's formal aspects above its representational subject matter.

What was the first abstract painting in history?
One name which comes to mind when we speak of the birth of abstract art is, inevitably, Wassily Kandinsky. In 1935, the Russian artist wrote to his gallerist in New York to make a claim that was no small thing: to have created the first abstract painting in the history of art, a work made in 1911. “Indeed, it’s the world’s first-ever abstract picture, because back then, not one single painter was painting in an abstract style. A ‘historic painting,’” wrote the painter.
Even Kandinsky’s widow later participated in the discussion. In 1946, soon after her husband’s death, she defended his place as the original creator of abstract art. The dispute included other artists, some of whom even changed the dates of their works to claim the coveted title. Among them were Robert Delaunay, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, and Kazimir Malevich.

Window on the City No. 3, Robert Delaunay (1912)

Komposition V, Wassily Kandinsky (1911)

Other artists were working on works that are now classed as "abstract" at the same time. Frantiek Kupka (whose Amorpha, Chromatique chaude, and Amorpha, Fugue à deux couleurs were displayed in Paris in 1912) and Francis Picabia (whose watercolor Caoutchouc was created in 1909, before Kandinsky's manifesto) are two examples. Without a doubt, the debate is tricky because abstract art might be said to have emerged gradually and quietly. There were already working with hints of abstraction before the great works could be classed in this way, and abstract artists could identify themselves as such. Swedish art is an example of this. Hilma AF Klint, a Swedish artist, is an example of this. She was a portraitist and landscape painter during her lifetime. However, as of 1906, some of her works were created with spirals and decidedly abstract organic patterns (directed by what she described as "spiritual energies").

Primordial Chaos, Hilma af Klint (1906)

Abstraction has evolved over time, from its beginnings in the late 1800s to the present day. It's a remarkably adaptable genre that has allowed for its immense expansion, and it can today be categorized in hundreds of various ways while still remaining abstract art. Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field, Post-painterly Abstraction, and even Minimalism, to mention a few, are examples of this.

Abstraction's dominance has pervaded modern art as well, and it continues to command a large share of the market in commercial galleries and auction houses today. From the rapid rise of Abstraction-Création, a group founded to resist the impact of the Surrealists, to well-known abstract painters who continue to work in the genre today, it is apparent that this genre will thrive for many years to come.

Still from 'Gerhard Richter: The Painter Without a Brush'

Tomoo Gokita, Scorn, 2011. Image courtesy of Japan Times.

The 10 best abstract artists of all time - 

1. Vasily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)
2. Piet Mondrian (1872 - 1944)
3. Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935)
4. Lyubov Popova (1889 - 1924)
5. Mark Rothko (1903 - 1966)
6. Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956)
7. Agnes Martin (1912 - 2004)
8. Joan Mitchell (1925 - 1992)
9. Ellsworth Kelly (1923 - 2015)
10. Bridget Riley (Born 1931)

Music

As visual art gets more abstract, it takes on some of the features of music, which is an art genre that employs abstract sound and time divisions. Wassily Kandinsky, a self-taught pianist, was inspired by the idea of marks and associative colour resonating in the soul[32][33][34]. Charles Baudelaire proposed the theory that while all of our senses respond to different stimuli, they are all connected on a deeper aesthetic level.

The belief that art has a spiritual component and can transcend 'everyday' experience to reach a spiritual level is closely tied to this. In the early twentieth century, the Theosophical Society disseminated the ancient wisdom of India's and China's sacred writings. Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, and other artists striving for an 'objectless condition' became interested in the occult as a means of creating an 'inner' object in this setting. The circle, square, and triangle, which are universal and eternal shapes found in geometry, become the spatial elements in abstract art; they, like colour, are essential systems underlying visible reality.

Pablo Picasso, 1913–14, Head (Tête)