About Abstract Painting

The fundamental principles of abstract painting were developed by European artists who were part of the early 20^th Century movement known as “Modernism”. These principles were applied to painting, sculpture, music, literature (prose and poetry), dance, theater, photography, and just about every possible art form of the time. In reality all art is abstract by its very nature. Every art work, even the most representational or mundane, has a structure. ... a way in which it is put together. It is made up of sections or pieces. These vary in terms of color, size, shape, direction, position, texture, materials and so on. The interaction and interrelationship between the various parts of a work of art are its structure –its abstract nature. And it is especially the contrasts between these various parts that spark our interest and hold our attention It is through precisely such interactions that the artwork communicates effectively if it is to succeed. This is what the utopian “Modernists” and, for that matter, the artists of the Renaissance and even those of ancient Greece  and Rome believed. They believed in and practiced the notion that “composition counts” because it communicates. Yet, even though the conscious foundations of this idea may have originated in the sculptures and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome and later in the Renaissance, this concept is really rooted in something more primitive. It is rooted in the very nature of how we perceive and respond to the light, space and shapes of the universe around us.  It is  because of this that abstract art can speak to us through the universal language of light, shape, color, line and space. Abstract art is essentially visual music.