Pioneers of Abstract Art

Munich, 1910: The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky creates the first abstract watercolour.
Kandinsky moved away from figurative art, on which Western painting had always been based, and sought to develop an art of inner experience. In the history of western painting, Wassily Kandinsky was the first artist to break away from external reality, opening the way for an abstract art that was an expression of inner experience. However, the direct influence of Egyptian writing systems lead Kandinsky to explore a different type of abstraction. In this work, he re-establishes the coherent, grid-like structure of hieroglyphics, transforming painting into a visual language. Like a chessboard, each sign acquires meaning based on its position in relation to other elements in the system.

He drew inspiration from music, in particular that of his friend Arnold Schönberg, and concentrated on his own emotions. In order to capture the essence of images, Kandinsky sought to reduce painting to its basic component: line on a flat surface. In doing so, he also reveals the link between images and words: how painting is, in essence, a form of writing.

He was joined in this quest by the Swiss painter Paul Klee.
Like Kandinsky, Paul Klee reduced painting to a relationship between lines, planes, shapes and colour. Following trips to Tunisia and Egypt, he began to use painting to explore the limits of writing: how letters, once removed from their original function, can be treated as pictorial motifs.
Surrealism

Paris 1924: A member of the Surrealist group, headed by the painter and poet André Breton, the Spaniard Joan Miró used abstract forms to transcribe his dreams.
He scattered geometrical shapes on a monochrome background with no points of reference to create a fantastic, childlike universe.


Writing and drawing blend together in his restless compositions. Responding to André Breton’s call for an “automatic” form of art, Masson created works by throwing sand onto glue-coated supports.

Surrealism, the liberation of the unconscious through a spontaneous approach to painting, originated as a literary movement based on the technique of automatic writing. André Masson was the first to integrate this approach into painting. By establishing the graphic component of language, he recombines words and images.
Abstract Expressionism

New York, 1943, The American Jackson Pollock, influenced by his encounter with the French Surrealists, devoted himself to the gestural painting known as Action painting.
He invented the dripping technique by making expansive bodily movements to drip paint on canvases laid out on the ground. The American artist Lee Krasner also used the dripping technique to create works that seem to consist of grids of paint. Some of her compartmentalised canvases are reminiscent of hieroglyphs whose meaning has been lost.

In the work of Lee Krasner, Pollock’s wife, automatism became more precise and consistent. Krasner’s engagement with oriental manuscripts and Islamic calligraphy adds a distinctive shape to the gesture. Like writing, her approach was more controlled and deliberate. Here, the physicality of the canvas is as dominant as the oil paint that embellishes it. It is therefore similar to an Egyptian stele where, alongside the hieroglyphs, the shape and material are essential to the object's overall impact.
The Second School of Paris

Paris. 1947: The French painter Georges Mathieu rebelled against the strictly geometrical form of abstract art.
He devoted his efforts to a lyrical form of abstraction consisting of blotches, runs and splashes of paint. Making speed and risk part of his art, Georges Mathieu painted large works in public, performing to audiences of as many as 2,000 people.

Simon Hantaï, a French citizen of Hungarian origin, painted in vivid colours, which he then covered with a darker layer of paint.
The canvas has been scratched in places to reveal the colours beneath. He also adopted a way of folding the canvas to obtain a random, fragmentary distribution of colours on the surface.
The Poet Painters

Brussels, 1948: The Belgian poet and painter Christian Dotremont made his first “word drawings” and “word paintings”.
The artist sought to experience writing as such, as pure form, as spontaneously as possible.

He invented the concept of “logograms”, poems drawn vigorously with a brush, using black ink on sheets of white paper.

Vence, 1959: In his search for a creative spontaneity that all could engage in, the Frenchman Jean Dubuffet turned his attention to doodles and graffiti.
The artist aimed for a form of expression that was primitive, archaic, impulsive and totally free.
Contemporary Art

East Berlin, 1964: The German painter and sculptor A. R. Penck created works featuring an abundance of pictograms.
He used an archaic language to achieve universality, drawing on cave art as well as graffiti and cybernetics.

London, 2007: The Palestinian sculptor and video artist Mona Hatoum engages with the field of abstraction via subtle installations composed of everyday objects.
These seemingly abstract works in fact conceal deeply felt political and feminist messages.