The document discusses the origins and development of abstract art through key figures like Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. It notes that Kandinsky was inspired by an exhibit of Claude Monet's paintings to pursue non-representational art focused on color, form and line. Kandinsky went on to develop his own abstract style and founded the Der Blaue Reiter group to promote the genre. The document also covers Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, which stripped art down to primary colors, black, white and gray, straight lines and rectangles.

1. Abstract Art
Sushmi Diraviam
Sarban Singh
Megan Blanck

2. Wassily
Kadinsky
• Born in Moscow
• learned music at a young age
• pursuing law and teaching
SO.......?

3. Kandinsky went to an art exhibit and saw this...
Haystacks at Giverny by Claude Monet

4. The Blue
Rider by
Kandinsky
1903

5. What is Abstract Art?
• nonobjective and nonrepresentational
• portraying non-visual aspects of an
object
• color, form and line - only things that
matter
• took meaning out of the paintings and
emphasized emotion

6. Blue Mountain
by Kandinsky
1909

7. Untitled, First Abstract Watercolour by Kandinsky, 1910

8. Kandinsky
• Incorporated music into his artwork
• ex. saturation associated with volume
of sound
• “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the
harmonies, the soil is the piano with many
strings. The artist is the hand that plays,
touching one key to another, to cause
vibrations in the soil.” -Kandinsky

9. Der Blaue Reiter
• 1911 Kandinsky organized a group called
“Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider) - 9
artists
• promote abstract art
• transferring spiritual experiences through
color and sound
• published Concerning the Spiritual in Art

10. Concerning the Spiritual in Art
• got all his ideas out there
about abstract art - western
culture
• “inner necessity” needed for
art

11. Composition 7 by Kandinsky, 1913

12. Squares with Concentric Circles by Kandinsky 1913

13. Teaching at the Bauhaus
• increased his attention to
geometry
• paid attention to the
relationship between the
forms and colors
• deeper connection with his
work

14. On White II
by
Kandinsky
1923

15. Composition X by Kandinsky
1939

16. Kazmir Malevich
• Started Suprematism
• Taught himself how to paint
• Russian
• Learned about Cubism
through Russian
collector who displayed
art of Cezanne, Matisse,
and Picasso

17. Suprematism
• Geometric Shapes
• Simplification
• Movement- tilting
• Color schemes
• Flight
• Non-Objective
• Emotion

18. Taking in the Rye, 1911

19. Head of a Peasant Girl, 1912-1913

20. Portrait of Matiushin, 1913

21. Englishman in Moscow, 1914

22. Influences
• Vladimir Markov
• Non-objective
• Velimir Khelbnikov
• Universal understanding

23. Black Square, 1915

24. Untitled, 1915

26. White on White, 1918

27. Piet Mondrian (1872 - 1944)
“Every artist has been inspired more by the beauty
of lines and color and the relationships between
”
them than by the concrete subject of the picture.

28. De Stijl (1917 - 1931)
• In 1917 Mondrian helped begin the periodical art
movement known as “De Stijl”
• Classified as Neoplacticism
• Complete rejection of visual reality
• Stripped art to its most basic form
• Straight lines, primary colors, and black white or
gray

29. Composition With Yellow, Composition II in Red, Blue,
Blue, and Red and Yellow
(1937) (1930)

30. Red and Blue Chair Rietveld Shroder House
Gerrit Rietveld (1917)

31. “The emotion of beauty is always obscured by
the appearance of the object. Therefore, the
object must be eliminated from the picture. ”
–Piet Mondrian
Composition 10
(1939)

32. Broadway Boogie Woogie

33. Artist Influences
Influences Influenced
•Van Gogh •Doesburg
•Cezanne •Leck
•Picasso •Guggenheim