Contemporary Art: Abstraction to the Present by Mark Brasuell

Hilma af Klint

mbrasuell2 — 2023-03-17 00:09:12 UTC

From the Guggenheim

Born in Stockholm in 1862, Hilma af Klint began her artistic career as an academy-educated painter of naturalistic landscapes and portraits. Influenced by the spiritual movements and scientific discoveries of her era, however, af Klint soon strove to express abstract concepts beyond what the eye can see. She began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906, years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and others would take similar strides to rid their own artwork of representational content. Yet while many of her better-known contemporaries published manifestos and exhibited widely, af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private.

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the first major solo exhibition in the United States devoted to the artist, is on view October 12, 2018–April 23, 2019 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Hilma af Klint

mbrasuell2 — 2023-03-17 00:13:51 UTC

The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth
1907

From 1000Museums.com

Much like the other members of its series, Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth has a vibrant, spiritual, botanical theme to it. The entire series is Hilma Af Klint’s response to a spiritual calling she felt to produce a series that abstractly depicted to four stages of life. The geometries in Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth are similar to those in the other paintings: circular and fluid.

Wiki
Hilma af Klint (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈhɪ̂lːma ˈɑːv ˈklɪnːt]; 26 October 1862 – 21 October 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history.^[1] A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian.^[2] She belonged to a group called "The Five", comprising a circle of women inspired by Theosophy, who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the so-called "High Masters"—often by way of séances.^[3] Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.

Wassily Kandinsky

mbrasuell2 — 2023-03-17 00:17:44 UTC

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (/ˈvæsɪli kænˈdɪnski/ VASS-il-ee kan-DIN-skee; Russian: Василий Васильевич Кандинский, tr. Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art, possibly after Hilma af Klint.^[1] Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia)—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity;^[9] it was a central aspect of his art. Some art historians suggest that Kandinsky's passion for Abstract art began when one day, coming back home, he found one of his own paintings hanging upside down in his studio, and he stared at it for a while before realizing it was his own work,^[10] suggesting to him the potential power of abstraction.

Arshile Gorky

mbrasuell2 — 2023-03-17 00:22:15 UTC

Arshile Gorky (/ˈɑːrʃiːl ˈɡɔːrki/ AR-sheel GOR-kee; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, Armenian: Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his life as a national of the United States.^[1] Along with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. The suffering and loss he experienced in the Armenian genocide had crucial influence at Gorky’s development as an artist.

https://www.arshilegorkyfoundation.org/artist/biography

Jackson Pollock

mbrasuell2 — 2023-03-17 00:26:27 UTC

From Brittanica
Jackson Pollock, in full Paul Jackson Pollock, (born January 28, 1912, Cody, Wyoming, U.S.—died August 11, 1956, East Hampton, New York), American painter who was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, an art movement characterized by the free-associative gestures in paint sometimes referred to as “action painting.” During his lifetime he received widespread publicity and serious recognition for the radical poured, or “drip,” technique he used to create his major works. Among his contemporaries, he was respected for his deeply personal and totally uncompromising commitment to the art of painting. His work and example had enormous influence on them and on many subsequent art movements in the United States. He is also one of the first American painters to be recognized during his lifetime and after as a peer of 20th-century European masters of modern art.

Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock

Padlet video test

mikepennella1 — 2023-03-20 15:43:02 UTC

This is my profound introduction to this presentation.

Mark Brasuell

mbrasuell2 — 2024-08-26 23:17:13 UTC

Collaboration with Michelle Rollman

mbrasuell2 — 2024-11-21 16:34:02 UTC

mbrasuell2 — 2024-12-04 00:59:24 UTC

Commentary

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