Abstract Art (incl. Op Art)

The question was tested and answered in the 1910s, almost simultaneously and independently, in several countries: what happens if painting abandons the representation of visible reality entirely? Kandinsky, convinced that colour and form could carry emotional and spiritual content without depicting anything, produced his first fully abstract watercolour in 1910. Mondrian moved from observed trees through Cubist fragmentation to his pure horizontal-vertical grids by 1917. Kasimir Malevich pinned a black square on a white canvas at the 1915 Petrograd exhibition and called it Suprematism. From these origins Abstract Art grew through Bauhaus (Klee, Itten, Albers), Constructivism, De Stijl, Abstract Expressionism and all the way to Bridget Riley's Op Art vibrations of the 1960s — a century of art made without a single recognisable object, exploring instead what colour, line, shape, texture and composition can do on their own terms.

How to recognise it

By definition, no recognisable objects — but the sub-genres within abstraction are visually distinct. Geometric abstraction (Mondrian, Albers, Malevich) works with clean-edged shapes, flat colour and rational composition. Lyrical abstraction (Kandinsky, Klee) curves and flows, colour is expressive and associative. Op Art (Riley, Vasarely) creates optical illusions — vibration, shimmer, impossible depth — through pattern and contrast. Hard-edge abstraction has sharp, flat, precisely bounded colour areas. The presence of visible gesture (drips, gestural strokes, impasto) usually signals Abstract Expressionism. If the painting is entirely non-representational but feels systematically ordered, you are likely in geometric abstraction; if it feels spontaneous and physically charged, closer to gestural abstraction.