Towards Abstraction

The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented transformation of artistic styles. Many artists became more concerned with form, colour and design than with trying to make realistic descriptions of the world.

For many people, Paul Cézanne is the pivotal figure in this atmosphere of radical change. His analysis of the way in which we perceive an object led to the distortion and fragmentation of the image. In doing this he expanded the possibilities of painting, making way for the more aggressively fragmented forms found in subsequent artistic movements such as Cubism.

Henri Matisse and Andre Derain worked closely together during the summers of 1904 and 1905, in the south of France, where the light and the climate inspired them to experiment with vivid, non-naturalistic colours. However, the bright and decorative quality we see today was considered crude by some of their contemporaries, earning them the title 'Fauves' or 'wild beasts'. Their rapid daubs of paint and strange, unnatural palette was described by one critic as 'the barbaric and naïve sport of a child who plays with a box of colours.'

African and Oceanic tribal art, often described as 'primitive' art, was an important source of inspiration for avant-garde artists. Picasso's interest in the pared-down features of African tribal masks led to his experiments in distorting and simplifying the human form into a series of geometric planes - representing an impression of multiple, fragmented viewpoints. This was a radical break with the traditions of painting: it suggested that images are artificial constructs, no longer fixed in space and time but determined by the eye of the beholder.

Sun, Church at Zeeland; Zoutelande Church Façade 1909 - 1910, Piet Mondrian
Oil on canvas, 90.7 x 62.2
© 2005 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust
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