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Abstract art is easier to understand and appreciate when you know what is beyond a brief superficial definition, what are its characteristics and its history: origin, development and importance.
What is abstract
Abstraction is the act and the result of abstracting (from the Latin abstrahĕre: extract, summarize the most substantial).
The abstract adjective qualifies what can not be perceived directly through the senses, that which excludes the concrete and moves away from the external aspect of a reality.
That is, some of the synonyms of abstract are: indefinite, general or conceptual. And some of its antonyms: definite, particular or figurative.
What is abstract art
Abstraction in art is a visual language independent of the representation of the natural whose expressivity lies in the value and organization of its elements.
Therefore, abstract art is a concept opposed to figurative art that applies to various artistic disciplines.
Characteristics of abstract art
It moves away from the mimesis of external appearance. The abstract artwork exists independently of reality.
The degree of abstraction can be partial or absolute. In pure abstract art there are no recognizable figurative traces, while partial abstraction preserves parts of the referent while modifying others.
Origin of abstract art
Abstraction is not an invention of Western modern art. There are an infinite number of samples of geometric and stylized forms used since the origin of art in prehistory and other cultures have for centuries practiced and admired abstract visual arts such as calligraphy.
So why is the emergence of pure abstract painting at the beginning of the 20th century considered a turning point?
Returning to Western art
Returning to Western art, from the Renaissance onwards the concern to recreate the illusion of tangible reality dominates visual arts such as painting or sculpture. It will not be until the arrival of Impressionism that the painters invest the priorities in the representation and give a greater importance to the pictorial procedure that distances them from the external appearances of the reality.
Abstraction is making its way as figurative especially relevant
Abstraction is making its way as figurative art enters into crisis with improvements in the young field of photography and the diffusion of this new procedure to capture reality.
The avant-garde movements
The avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, such as expressionism or cubism, react against realism by exploring different ways in which they can manipulate the elements of a work independently of reality.
Pure abstract art is believed to have been born in 1910 in Munich by the Russian artist Wasily Kandinsky who exposes the first ideas about abstract art in "From the spiritual to the art."
Several contemporary and later theories have tried to explain why pure abstraction arises:
Move away from reality for reasons as diverse as she was saying all that had to be said about the representation of reality, as a consequence of the desire to evade the crisis and the social disorder of the moment or as a manifestation of perplexity And impotence of the artist in a given historical context.
Finally The desire
The desire consequently, for representation of the absolute. A return to the essence of art with more limited and constant elements than can be found in reality, the belief that art can not be identified with any other reality than art itself or the utopian desire to create and communicate Through a universal visual language.
Emphasis on the very expressiveness of the essential elements of art and its organization.
Also the materials and procedures acquire meaning beyond their technical aspect.
The title of the works can be explanatory and help to convey a message.
