As far as we can tell, abstract art first began some
70,000 years ago withprehistoric engravings: namely, two pieces of rock engraved with abstract geometric patterns, found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa. This was followed by the abstract red-ochre dots and hand stencils discovered among the El Castillo Cave paintings, dated to 39,000 BCE, the Neanderthal engraving at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, and the club-shaped claviform image among theAltamira Cave paintings (c.34,000 BCE). Thereafter, abstract symbols became the predominant form of Paleolithic cave art, outnumbering figurative images by 2:1. See: Prehistoric Abstract Signs. From Academic Realism to Abstraction Up until the late 19th century, most painting and sculpture followed the traditional principles of Classical Realism, as taught in the great Academies of Europe. These principles laid down that art's first duty was to provide a recognizable scene or object. However much affected by the demands of style or medium, a work of art had to imitate or represent external reality. However, during the last quarter of the 19th century, things began to change. Impressionist art demonstrated that the strict academic style of naturalistic painting was no
longer the only authentic way of doing things.
Then, during the period 1900-1930, developments in other areas of modern art provided additional techniques (involving colour, a rejection of 3-D perspective, and new shapes), which would be used to further the quest for abstraction. Artists Start To Move Away From Reality The first of the major modern art movements to subvert the academic style of classical realism was Impressionism (fl.1870-1880), whose palette was often decidedly non-naturalistic, although its art remained firmly and clearly derived from the real world, even if Claude Monet's final work on his Water Lilies genre seemed more akin to abstraction. The emergence of abstract art was also influenced by the Art Nouveau movement (c.1890-1914). When Wassily Kandinsky wrote to his New York gallerist Jerome Neumann in December 1935, he was clearly anxious to reassure him once again that he had painted his first abstract picture in 1911What Kandinsky did not know is that a Swedish painter by the name of Hilma af Klint had created her first abstract painting in her Stockholm studio in 1906, five years before him. Whats more, she had taken the same path towards abstraction The Primordial Chaos series was a seed from which almost 200 abstract paintings were to develop over the following years. Between August and December 1907 Klint
created a series of monumental works entitled The Ten
Biggest, characterised by ovals, circles and serpentine lines in radiant colours. The organic forms of the early abstractions gave way to a rigorous geometricism. In 1914/1915 she painted The Swan, composed of circular forms on a red ground. By the time of her death in 1944, the painter had shown none of her abstract works in any exhibition. In the early 20 th century, abstract art started gaining importance as artists could now delve deeper into themselves and create art that was not just depicting things and objects as everyone saw them. Abstract art sprang up at around this time and in many places around the world almost simultaneously. Different variations of abstract art were developed and were known by different names; in Moscow and Petersburg (Rayonism, Constructivism), in Netherlands (De Stijl), in Paris (Cubism), and in Munich (The Bauhaus). Then came the ultimate defining point in the history of art; and that was Abstract Expressionism. Up until this point, abstract art was mostly practiced in Europe, specifically in Paris. But in 1940, with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, the popularity of abstract art took the United States by storm. This form of abstract art emerged in New York in the 1940s and wasnt so much a school of art as it was a new way of thinking. The abstract expressionists broke away from the conventions of the past and began creating art that
was previously not deemed as acceptable in
the art world. Thus abstract art can be called a type of rebellion by artists of that time. The history of abstract art can thus be seen as a process that evolved slowly but surely and reached its culmination with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism or true Abstract Art.