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Abstract Mixed Media

ABSTRACT STYLE

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

Find original abstract paintings, sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Abstract
Color:  Blue
Original Collage Titled: FS2165ct06
Located in West Palm Beach, FL
Fusion Series original collage by renown artist Cecil Touchon painting collage is 12 x 18 on 22 x 30 heavy watercolor paper signed verso Cecil To...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Archival Paper

Oct. 15 (VIII) (Abstract Mixed Media in Green, Blue, Lavender, and Terracotta)
Located in Hudson, NY
mixed media on paper 12 x 9 inches on mat Artist Statement: "On a very cold day last winter, my partner and I decided to walk on the railroad tracks from Bard to Tivoli and back aga...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Liebespaar in Mondlandschaft ( Lovers in a moonscape ) by Adolf Hölzel, 1925
Located in Berlin, DE
Pastel and graphite on paper, 1925, by Adolf Hölzel ( 1853-1934 ) Verso: stamp of the estate. Measurements: Image: Height: 5.51 in ( 14,5 cm ), Width: 4.53 in ( 11,5 cm ), Framed:...
Category

1920s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Graphite, Pastel

Side Track 54
Located in New York, NY
Leign Wen’s works reflect her personal and cultural histories. Having grown up on the island of Taiwan, she has a deep affinity for the elemental power of water and the forces of nat...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Oil, Board

Birth of Light
Located in Miami, FL
The strength and fragility of humanity is revealed in Larisa Safaryan‘s works. The smooth shape of an egg is the artist‘s “canvas” upon which ideas about life, renewal and rebirth ar...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Deep Blue
Located in Miami, FL
Tom Lieber is known for his dynamic abstract expressionist paintings, which focus on the human energy, experience, feelings, and processes of receiving and expressing. Lieber uses his powerful intuition to project the state of his inner being onto the canvas, enriching the paintings with strong emotions. Influenced by nature and meditations, Lieber believes that the body can be better equipped for creating than the mind, treating the act of painting as a full body experience with his spontaneous gestures and fearless approach to the canvas. The grace and shape of his bold lines appear over subtle neutral backgrounds with pockets of dense color and movement. His artworks are included in many prominent private and public art collections, including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art San Francisco...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Happy Rainbow
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Petra Rös-Nickel’s original paintings merge playful forms, bright colors and architectural compositions in oil and mixed media on canvas. Her contemporary artworks contain rich textures and patterns, referencing popular European textile design of the fifties and sixties. Rös-Nickel’s work translates the geometric and organic elements of an era which hoisted the flags of modernism and which, due to a trend to return to a rather retro style, has become topical once more. This colorful 63 inch high by 16 inch wide contemporary oil painting can be installed horizontally or vertically. The sides of this artwork are painted and it does not require framing. This one-of-a-kind painting is signed by the artist on the back. Free local Los Angeles area delivery. Affordable U.S. and global shipping available. A certificate of authenticity issued by the art gallery is included. Petra was born 1963 in Wathlingen near Celle, Germany, and breaks completely new ground with her abstract forms of painting and expression. After studying fashion design at the professional school for clothing in Bremen, 1980, Petra Rös-Nickel changed her field of study to architecture in Eckernförde, 1982. She now lives in Hamburg, Germany. Preferring the creative aspects of the studies to the technical ones, the artist developed the basics of her painting, never denying the roots of applied design and soon ending in a refreshing, distinctive style. Petra Rös-Nickel experiments with form, along with the use of a technique that draws attention to the processes used in creating a painting. Essential is the color space presented in multiple layers that offers the beholder access to more profound color planes. These details, scratchings, and rubbings lead to various elements of tension, such as “patchwork” or harmonious-contemplative forms (“windows”) and “oscillating lines”. Rös-Nickel's modernist paintings develop an energetic impact on the space they‘re displayed in, conveying her joy of life and self-confidence. Her abstract geometric textured artworks have been exhibited and collected worldwide, including Germany, Belgium, USA, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. Notable collectors include Chris Rock...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil

Toward the Skies
Located in New Orleans, LA
Andresen’s work focuses on the art of repair; more specifically how such actions have consequences both intended and unintended. Using a variety of materially driven processes the wo...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Silk, Thread, Mixed Media, Acrylic

Side Track 67
Located in New York, NY
Leigh Wen’s works reflect her personal and cultural histories. Having grown up on the island of Taiwan, she has a deep affinity for the elemental power of water and the forces of nat...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Oil

Time #04
Located in Brooklyn, NY
From the collection "Quantas formas tens para contar o tempo" - Acrylic and charcoal on canvas.
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Acrylic, Canvas

Let Me Jump In Your Game
Located in Brooklyn, NY
From the collection "Quantas formas tens para contar o tempo" - Acrylic and charcoal on canvas.
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Acrylic

The Book I Didn't Read
Located in Brooklyn, NY
From the collection "Quantas formas tens para contar o tempo" - Acrylic and charcoal on canvas.
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Acrylic

Katharina - Spray paint on canvas by the French artist L'Atlas
Located in Miami, FL
This piece of art is unique, one of a kind. The French artist, Jules Dedet Granel, aka L’Atlas, born in 1978, found in his research around writing the startin...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Spray Paint

Blue On Blue #1 (Abstract Painting on Shaped 3 Dimensional Canvas, Circles)
Located in Denver, CO
Blue On Blue #1, original vintage 1965 abstract painting by Denver artist, Angelo Di Benedetto (1913-1992). Acrylic paint in shades of blue on shaped 3 dimensional (3D) canvas with a circular form protruding from the center of square painting. Presented in a vintage/original frame, outer dimensions measure 26 ¾ x 26 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 26 x 26 x 3 ¼ inches. Exhibited: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1965 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting December 8, 1965 to January 30, 1966 The son of Italian immigrants from the Salerno province in southern Italy, as a teenager Di Benedetto worked as a truck driver in the mornings and a bartender in the afternoons to study at the Cooper Union Art School in New York City (1930-34) from which he graduated with a certificate in freehand drawing. He won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Art School where he studied for three years, beginning in 1934, with Russian émigré painter, Alexandre Jacovleff, a member of Mir Isskustva (World of Art) in St. Petersburg before the Russian Revolution. In 1936 he painted a religious mural for St. Michael’s Grove in Paterson, New Jersey. The following year, he entered his first juried exhibition at the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, winning first prize and first honorable mention. In December 1938, the Royal Netherlands Steamship Line sent him on a two-month ethnological study trip to Haiti, his first exposure to a different environment outside the United States. During what turned out to be an extended six-month stay, he studied and painted the life and religious customs of the island, resulting in a series of colorful, stylized paintings inspired by his immersion in the local culture. He also did scenes of Port-au-Prince and executed commissions received from prominent people in Haiti, including government officials. In 1940, his Haitian paintings were exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York (his first solo show) and also reproduced in the January 1940 issue of Life Magazine. One of his Haitian paintings, Morning in Port-au-Prince, was owned by an American author, politician and U.S. ambassador, Clare Boothe Luce, while another image, Haiti Post Office, was acquired for the Encyclopedia Britannica Collection and later donated to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Before World War II, Di Benedetto traveled extensively around the United States in his car and trailer doing regional paintings. In 1941, he did what is considered the first authentic version of George Washington Crossing the Delaware, a contrast to the well-known painting on the same subject (1851) by German-born painter, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. During the war, Di Benedetto volunteered for a secret mission to Africa in 1941 before the Allied invasion, serving as director of camouflage, foreman of native laborers, and an interpreter while based in Eritrea. The following year he received a direct commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the First Photo Mapping Squadron, leading groups as a guide and interpreter and doing ground control. During his free time in Africa, he sketched and painted the local population and his fellow servicemen. Following Africa, he served as an orientation officer and aerial photographic officer for the 311th Photo Wing at Bolling Field, in the District of Columbia where he did a series of illustrated articles describing the natives in the different countries where the men of his organization were stationed during the war. In 1945 he was assigned to a mapping unit at Buckley Air Field in Denver where he served until his discharge in 1946. Like many other servicemen stationed at the time in Colorado, Di Benedetto chose to remain in Colorado, impressed by the state’s physical grandeur and healthful climate. After the war, he lived briefly for about a year in Rangely, a small town in northwest Colorado where he traveled and sketched. But finding it a little too remote, he settled in the old mining town of Central City in 1947, his home base for the rest of his life. He spent his first six years there transforming the old Sauder-McShane Mercantile warehouse into a giant art studio. His initial acquaintance with the town’s mining town history in 1947 resulted in a drawing, Death of a Miner, showing a male figure buried under a pile of collapsed rock in a mining tunnel. In 1949 Di Benedetto and his wife, ceramist Lee Porzio, opened the Benpro Art School in his studio where he conducted summer art classes. The following year he teamed up with a Denver-based artist, Frank Vavra, to open the Denver Art Center at 924 Broadway. He and Vavra were founding members of the 15 Colorado Artists who seceded in 1948 from the Denver Artists Guild because they were dissatisfied with the older organization’s underlying conservatism and the disdain of some of its members for modern art. Welcoming anyone wanting to learn how to draw or paint, the Denver Art Center in downtown Denver only lasted about a year. Undeterred by its lack of success, Di Benedetto continued throughout his career to give workshops, classes, and lectures on art-related topics in Denver and elsewhere. Examples of topics ranged from subjects such as “African Art,” Chappell House, Denver (1945) and “University or Artistic Thought” sponsored by the Art for World Friendship Committee (1954). He also taught locally at the Jewish Community Center, Steele Community Center, International House, Southern Colorado State College-Pueblo, and lectured at the University of Denver. Beginning in 1969 he sponsored over one hundred youths at his studio in Central City to spend a summer learning about art. He also conducted classes for serious working artists. His efforts earned him an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado in 1977. He likewise promoted contemporary Colorado artists’ work in the 1950s, heading a committee that presented one-person exhibitions in a small gallery at the Vogue Art Cinema on South Pearl Street in Denver. His interest in promoting the arts led to his participation in numerous organizations. In the 1960s he became concerned with environmental and urban art and was the president of Art for the Cities, a Denver-based nonprofit organization. He also was the chairman of and a participant in the first annual environmental art exhibit held at Denver’s American Medical Center. In 1968 Colorado Governor John Love appointed him to the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities in which he remained active until 1975. He served for two consecutive years as program coordinator for the Governor’s Conference on the Arts and Humanities. At the 1969 conference, Governor Love presented him an award for his contribution to the art and artists of Colorado. At the same time, he actively participated in the civic life of Central City. The town’s Police Magistrate (1955-56), he twice campaigned for mayor, first in 1966 and again in 1973, and ran for commissioner in 1979. He socialized with artists Ben Shahn, Herbert Bayer and Mark Rothko, as well as theatrical stars appearing at the Central City Opera House, including Helen Hayes, Mae West, and Gypsy Rose Lee. He invited them to carve their autographs on his kitchen table. Di Benedetto worked with equal facility in a variety of media: acrylic, oil paint, watercolor, charcoal, Conte crayon, graphic arts and metal (copper, iron). Up until the early 1950s, his output was dominated by representational figure work and expressionist Colorado landscapes that were not always immune from controversy. When Life Magazine included a reproduction of his Regionalist painting, Lovers in the Cornfield (1941) in its article, “Ten Years of American Art: Life Reviews the Record of a Lively, Important Decade” (November 26, 1946, issue), three counties in Massachusetts banned the publication. Just as immediately, the painting was exhibited in Denver. He said that he liked the West because the people, despite their lack of exposure to art, were individualistic and almost “anarchistic.” In the early 1950s he did woodcuts in a modernist style, including Remembrance, showing his two young daughters. Influenced by Abstract Expressionism at that time, he began considering the elimination of the image from his work. By the end of the decade, he had decided that “the circle – pure and simple was one of the most familiar symbols of mankind and that it metaphored into everything.” At the same time, he noted that “99% of the abstract painters shied away from using…[the circle]. When they didn’t, they slaughtered it, murdered it and buried it. So it became my motif.” For more than three decades he explored the circle in paint, sculpture and shaped canvas. Two examples of the last-named medium are his Red CQ and Black C-1, both from 1969. Because abstraction touched upon his deep feelings and spirituality, he felt he could make visible that part of life which “we feel but almost never see.” His fascination with the circle also relates to his belief that to affect the dialogue existing between object and maker, the artist must “create archetypal shapes [that have universal appeal], not symbols…to reflect simply the intrinsic beauty of the shape itself.” A strong advocate for public art, Di Benedetto headed Art for the Cities, Inc., which sponsored nine sculptures for Burns Park as part of the Denver Sculpture Symposium held in the Mile High City in 1968. The catalysts for the idea of the sculptures were Beverly and Bernie Rosen, who had been instrumental in the creation of the contemporary department at the Denver Art Museum. Along with Di Benedetto, the other participating sculptors were Dean Fleming, Peter Forakis, Roger Kotoske, Tony Magar, Robert Mangold, Robert Morris, Richard Van Buren and Bill Verhelst. The park project eventually served as a prototype for twenty-two states, bringing the sculpture to urban spaces. The sculptures reflected Di Benedetto’s concept of “burden-less environmental art” with no hidden meaning for the public to decipher. His goal in public art was to “create a work which, when integrated with the site, will create a tranquil oasis, a counterbalance to the modern chaotic world we experience daily.” During the 1960s and 1970s, he received other major sculpture commissions: an 80-foot-long copper wall, Jewish Community Center, Denver (1962); sculpture garden, General Rose Hospital, Denver (1964); Fountain, First National Bank of Dallas (1966); Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, Pueblo, Colorado (1969); neighborhood park sculpture, Yonkers, New York (1971); High School Park, Northglenn, Colorado (1974); ice skating rink sculpture, Pueblo (1976). Fate was not as kind to his mural which the Colorado Supreme Court justices commissioned him to paint in 1976 for the Colorado Judicial Building from a field of twenty-two candidates. With his former student, Phyllis Montrose as his principal assistant along with three others, he spent a year and a half executing the mural. Entitled Justice Through the Ages (aka Lawgivers), it depicted sixty individuals from ancient Babylon...
Category

1960s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Bailey
Located in Lincoln, MA
John Gibson is a native of Massachusetts, born in Boston in 1958. He attended the Rhode Island School of design (where he earned a BFA in 1980), before earning his post-graduate degree from the prestigious master’s program at Yale. Gibson had his first one-man show at the University of Massachusetts in 1984, and he began showing in group exhibitions in the Boston and New York areas in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s Gibson’s paintings began to focus on pyramidal compositions of spheres resembling children’s playground balls, decorated in the manner of colorful soccer balls. Executed in oil on wooden panel, these pieces began to attract generous critical praise for Gibson from the pages of the Boston Globe, the Partisan Review, and the New Yorker, among others. Gibson’s paintings are filled with subtle yet provocative disjunctions, which challenge the viewer’s initial perceptions of the pieces. While these images would seem at first to be fairly simple atmospheric, realistic renderings of colorful balls, a closer examination will reveal that the surfaces of Gibson’s paintings are deeply scored by the artist in geometric patterns that sometimes conform to, and in other instances defy, the outlines of the spheres rendered in paint. An invisible substructure is suggested in these incisions, which also serve to reinforce the physicality of the painting. Some pieces also include incised and/or painted suggestions of shadowy architectural spaces (arches, hallways, shallow niches) in which the balls are placed. The scale of the objects rendered is ultimately unclear: the balls could be of the large, inflatable type, but they alternatively suggest the density of much smaller decorated wooden croquet balls...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Oil

REFLETS DANS L’EAU 1 - MAKTUB
Located in Chicago, IL
This painting is a dual panel acrylic on bamboo paper, the image taken from a painting I did in 2010 called MAKTUB, which in Arabic means, “It is Written The front layer is a protect...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

I HEARD AN OAK TREE
Located in Chicago, IL
In 2013, I was asked to curate the poetry for a sound and light installation by Italian artist Marco Nereo Rotelli at Northwestern University. Marco asked me to write a poem about sa...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Joy In Motion (Triptych) - Large Scale Abstract Artwork
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Arizona artist Gail Titus paints vibrant abstract compositions in acrylic on canvas with a focus on texture and color. The geometric planes of her artworks and the texture in her mov...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Blue Drop
Located in Santa Monica, CA
Striking contemporary light work by accomplished abstract artist Philip Vaughan
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Neon Light

Ron Aloni, Blown Glass & Wire Wall Object (blue) Israel 2019, Abstract Sculpture
Located in Greding, DE
Large wall object made of hand-blown glass and wire in light blue. Despite the hard material, Aloni's objects possess an extraordinary soft quality, which is the optical attraction of the work. Ron...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Wire

Map from Home to Kaz's Gallery
Located in Kansas City, MO
Artist : Kory Twaddle Title : Map from Home to Kaz's Gallery Materials : Oil, acrylic, charcoal, conté crayon, oil pastel, pastel, paper, marker, and mixed media on paper Date : 200...
Category

2010s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Pencil, Graphite, Color Pencil, Paint, Newsprint, Cardboard, Watercolor,...

Torso II
Located in New Orleans, LA
Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...
Category

1970s Abstract Mixed Media

Materials

Mixed Media

Abstract mixed media for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Abstract mixed media available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add mixed media created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Francisco Nicolás, Melisa Taylor Metzger, Aimée Farnet Siegel, and Franco DeFrancesca. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Mixed Media and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Abstract mixed media, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available. Prices for mixed media made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1 and tops out at $385,000, while the average work sells for $2,221.

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