The First Abstract Paintings

Cubism had broken objects apart, and Fauvism and Expressionism had freed color. Between about 1910 and 1915 several artists, working separately in different countries, took the last step: paintings that show no objects at all, only color, line and shape. This is abstract (or non-objective) art.

Looking closely: Composition VII

Describe. A large canvas, about 2 by 3 meters, crowded with bright patches, black lines, swirls and shapes in red, blue, yellow, purple and green, with no recognizable objects. Analyze. The forms seem to whirl around a dark center left of middle. Hard black lines cut across soft, cloudy color; some areas are dense, others open. Kandinsky made more than thirty studies for it and painted the final canvas in three to four days. Interpret. Kandinsky (1866 to 1944), a Russian who worked in Munich, compared painting to music: colors were like tones and chords that move the soul directly. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911) he argued that art should express inner, spiritual truth. Scholars have traced faint echoes of themes such as floods and resurrection in the forms; Kandinsky wanted viewers to feel them rather than read them.

In Russia, Kazimir Malevich (1879 to 1935) went further. At the "0.10" exhibition in Petrograd in December 1915 he hung Black Square high in the corner of the room, the place where a religious icon hung in a Russian home. He called his movement Suprematism, the "supremacy of pure feeling." The original canvas is cracked; he painted later versions.