Modern Abstract Art Paintings & Artworks

Featured Modern Abstract Fine Artists

Wassily Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow, Russia, and died in 1944. He spent his childhood in Odessa, before studying law and economics at the University of Moscow and later becoming a teacher in those subjects. Kandinsky didn't take up the study of art until 1866, at the age of 30. In 1896 he moved to Munich, Germany, and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Art. Kandinsky initially painted primarily landscapes and townscapes. One his paintings, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), painted in 1903, gave its name to the Blaue Reiter art movement, which had Auguste Macke and Franz Marc as its two other most important members. Both Macke and Marc were more expressionist, rather than abstract, painters - Kandinsky, on the other hand, is notable as perhaps the first, beginning in 1911, to paint purely abstract paintings. Many of his abstract paintings were inspired by music, often including "composition" or "improvisation" in their titles. At the start of World War I, he returned to Russia, remaining there until after the Russian Revolution. After the Soviets banned all forms of abstract art in 1922, Kandinsky moved to Weimar, Germany, where he taught design at the Bauhaus art school to 1932. After the Bauhaus was dissolved by the Nazis, he moved to France, where he lived the rest of his life. [More...]

Joan Miro was born in 1893 in Barcelona, Spain, and died in 1983. He studied art at the Barcelona School of the Fine Arts. He was initially influenced by Fauvism and Cubism (Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso). Often included amoung the Surrealists, his work is clearly more abstract than surreal, although his abstract environments, such as Harlequin's Carnival have a decided surrealistic slant. [More...]

Piet Mondrian was born in 1872 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, and died in 1944. Mondrian initially painted on the side while working as a elementary teacher, painting mostly landscapes in an impressionistic style. His early work was also influenced by the Pointilists and the Fauvists. Moving to Paris from 1912 to 1914, he came under the influence of Picasso and the Cubists. During World War I, he returned to the Netherlands, helping to found the De Stijl art group, but returned to Paris once the war was over. He coined the term Neo-Plasticism to denote his own mature purely abstract style of painting, designing along a rectangular grid and painting primarily in primary colors. During World War II, he left Paris, going first to London, and then to New York, where he remained until the end of his life. One area where Mondrian's style had a big influence was advertising design. [More...]