Art Term

Abstract art

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect

Wassily Kandinsky
Cossacks (1910–1)
Tate

Strictly speaking, the word abstract means to separate or withdraw something from something else.

The term can be applied to art that is based on an object, figure or landscape, where forms have been simplified or schematised.

It is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Some artists of this ‘pure’ abstraction have preferred terms such as concrete art or non-objective art, but in practice the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is not always obvious.

Abstract art is often seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality.

Since the early 1900s, abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art.

Abstraction across a century

Wassily Kandinsky
Cossacks (1910–1)
Tate

Juan Gris
Bottle of Rum and Newspaper (1913–14)
Tate

Sonia Delaunay Electric Prisms 1913

Sonia Delaunay
Electric Prisms 1913

Orphism (1912–13): Coined by the French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. The name comes from the musician Orpheus in ancient Greek myths, as Apollinaire thought that painting should be like music. Main artists Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay also used the term simultanism to describe their work of this period.

Kazimir Malevich
Dynamic Suprematism (1915 or 1916)
Tate

Naum Gabo
Model for ‘Construction in Space ‘Two Cones’’ (1927)
Tate

The Work of Naum Gabo © Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, London 2023

Theo van Doesburg
Counter-Composition VI (1925)
Tate

Joan Miró
Painting (1927)
Tate

© Succession Miro/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2023

Morris Louis
Alpha-Phi (1961)
Tate

© The estate of Morris Louis

Cubist and fauvist artists depended on the visual world for their subject matter but opened the door for more extreme approaches to abstraction. Pioneers of ‘pure’ abstract painting were Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian from about 1910–20. A pioneer of abstract sculpture, which took reference from the modern world was the Russian constructivist Naum Gabo.

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Selected artists working with abstraction

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There are many theoretical ideas behind abstract art. While some have taken the idea of 'art for art’s sake' (that art should be purely about the creation of beautiful effects), others have proposed art can or should be like music, in that just as music is patterns of sound, art’s effects should be created by pure patterns of form, colour and line. The idea, derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, that the highest form of beauty lies not in the forms of the real world but in geometry, is also used in discussion of abstract art, as is the idea that abstract art, since it does not represent the material world, can be seen to represent the spiritual.

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Explore this term

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  • Patrick Heron, Garden Leaves 1955

    Abstraction sans frontières

    Éric de Chassey

    The show at Tate St Ives this summer explores the international context which shaped the work of artists in the Cornish town from the 1940s to 1960s. As Éric de Chassey writes, the broad exchange of ideas was not limited to American artists such as Rothko and de Kooning, but extended to French painters such as Nicolas de Staël, which would also reflect a shared interest in nature and landscape

  • Charline von Heyl Now or Else 2009

    Optimistic abstraction

    Gavin Delahunty

    The curator of the forthcoming exhibition by the German abstract painter introduces her work, and a fellow artist pays homage

  • Chance and Intention: Gerhard Richter’s Abstractions

    In this talk art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh looks in great detail at Richter’s responses to painters like Lucio Fontana, Jean Fautrier, and Robert Rauschenberg in 1962

  • Counter-Composition Theo van Doesburg

    Abstract Connections conference audio recordings

    Audio recordings of Abstract Connections conference, held in conjunction with two major exhibitions, Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World and Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective at Tate Modern.

  • Jay DeFeo The Rose 1958–66

    Coral and Lichen, Brains and Bowels: Jay DeFeo’s Hybrid Abstraction

    Catherine Spencer

    Situating the US artist Jay DeFeo within a network of West Coast practitioners during the 1950s and 1960s, this essay shows how her relief paintings – layered with organic, geological and bodily referents – constitute what can be understood as ‘hybrid abstraction’. This has affinities with ‘eccentric abstraction’ and ‘funk art’, but also resonates with the socio-political context of Cold War America.

  • David Smith - 5 Δ Σ 3-16-63 1963 Spray enamel on paper

    Abstraction Across Media: David Smith conference audio recordings

    Audio recording from the conference Abstraction Across Media: David Smith, with Anne Wagner (University of California, Berkeley), David Anfam (Phaidon Press), Alex Potts (University of Michigan), Jeremy Lewison and Rebecca Smith, daughter of the artist

Related Movements

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  • Cubism

    Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted

  • Fauvism

    Fauvism is the name applied to the work produced by a group of artists (which included Henri Matisse and André Derain) from around 1905 to 1910, which is characterised by strong colours and fierce brushwork

  • Suprematism

    Name given by the artist Kazimir Malevich to the abstract art he developed from 1913 characterised by basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colours

  • Constructivism

    Constructivism was a particularly austere branch of abstract art founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko in Russia around 1915

  • Rayonism

    An early form of abstract art characterised by interacting linear forms derived from rays of light

  • Simultanism

    Term invented by artist Robert Delaunay to describe the abstract painting developed by him and his wife Sonia Delaunay from about 1910

  • Tachisme

    Term used to describe the non-geometric abstract art that developed in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s characterized by spontaneous brushwork, drips and scribble-like marks

  • Neo-plasticism

    Neo-plasticism is a term adopted by the Dutch pioneer of abstract art, Piet Mondrian, for his own type of abstract painting which used only horizontal and vertical lines and primary colours

  • Concrete art

    Concrete art is abstract art that is entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that has no symbolic meaning

  • Objective abstraction

    The term objective abstraction refers to a non-geometric style of abstract art developed by a group of British artists in 1933

  • Abstract expressionism

    Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity

  • Minimalism

    Minimalism is an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle

  • Post-painterly abstraction

    Post-painterly abstraction is a blanket term covering a range of new developments in abstract painting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, characterised by a more rigorous approach to abstraction

  • Op art

    Op art was a major development of painting in the 1960s that used geometric forms to create optical effects

Related Techniques & approaches

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  • Non-objective art

    Non-objective art defines a type of abstract art that is usually, but not always, geometric and aims to convey a sense of simplicity and purity

  • Art informel

    Art informel is a French term describing a swathe of approaches to abstract painting in the 1940s and 1950s which had in common an improvisatory methodology and highly gestural technique

  • Art autre

    Also known as art informel, art autre translates as 'art of another kind' and was used to describe the dominant trend of abstract art in the 1940s and 1950s characterised by an improvisatory approach and highly gestural technique

  • Gestural

    Gestural is a term used to describe the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with a brush

  • Automatism

    In art, automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of the creative process

Related Groups

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  • Abstraction-Création

    Abstraction-Création was an association of abstract artists set up in Paris in 1931 with the aim of promoting abstract art through group exhibitions

  • American Abstract Artists (AAA)

    American Abstract Artists (AAA) is an organisation founded in 1936 to promote the appreciation of abstract art in the United States

  • De Stijl

    De Stijl was a circle of Dutch abstract artists who promoted a style of art based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals

  • Penwith Society of Arts

    Penwith Society of Arts is an artists' society formed in 1948 at St Ives, Cornwall, Britain by artists working in an abstract style

  • Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square)

    Cercle et Carré was an artist group formed in Paris in 1929 which strongly supported new developments in abstract art and in particular promoted mystical tendencies within it

  • Réalités nouvelles

    The Salon des Réalités nouvelles (new realities) was an exhibiting society devoted to pure abstract art founded in Paris in 1939

  • The Seven and Five Society

    Formed in London in 1919 The Seven and Five Society was initially a traditional group and can be seen as a British manifestation of the return to order that followed the First World War

  • Bauhaus

    Bauhaus was a revolutionary school of art, architecture and design established by Walter Gropius at Weimar in Germany in 1919

Abstract Art at Tate

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