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Abstract Art

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.

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Style: Abstract
Love (Peonies)
Love (Peonies)

Love (Peonies)

Located in Zofingen, AG

Two delicate peonies on a deep navy-blue background. It feels as if these two flowers have merged into one — this is love! The painting is created with acrylic on canvas: layered br...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Fantastic Zoology I.
Fantastic Zoology I.

Fantastic Zoology I.

Located in Slovak Republic, SK

Lovely etching, framed, with fine art glass. Signed, E/A.

Category

20th Century Abstract Art

Materials

Etching

Open Spaces, Abstract Painting
Open Spaces, Abstract Painting

Open Spaces, Abstract Painting

Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
Soft whites and cool blues create a tranquil, expansive space. Accents of orange and fine linework bring contrast and gentle energy. Minimalist abstract forms i...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Art

Materials

Acrylic

Untitled 4. From Ritmos abstractos (Abstract Rhythms) Series
Untitled 4. From Ritmos abstractos (Abstract Rhythms) Series

Untitled 4. From Ritmos abstractos (Abstract Rhythms) Series

Located in Miami Beach, FL

"Ritmos Abstratos" invites us to explore the visual universe of the artist Juan Carlos Amador, who, through his unique perspective, translates the pulsations of space and the invisi...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Spray Paint, Acrylic

Hui Sheng Landscape Original Oil On Canvas "Outside III"
Hui Sheng Landscape Original Oil On Canvas "Outside III"

Hui Sheng Landscape Original Oil On Canvas "Outside III"

Located in New York, NY

Title: Outside III Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 23 x 31 inches Frame: Framing options available! Condition: The painting appears to be in excellent condition. Note: This painting is u...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

'Abstract, Ebony & Rust', San Francisco Bay Area Abstraction, Large Oil
'Abstract, Ebony & Rust', San Francisco Bay Area Abstraction, Large Oil

'Abstract, Ebony & Rust', San Francisco Bay Area Abstraction, Large Oil

By Eral Leek

Located in Santa Cruz, CA

Signed lower right, "Eral" for Eral Leek (American, 20th century) and dated 1962. A substantial, mid-century oil abstract comprising bold, overlapping rectangular compositional elem...

Category

1960s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Apart I
Apart I

Apart I

Located in Dallas, TX

charcoal on paper

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

"Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolves and the Woodcutter"
"Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolves and the Woodcutter"

"Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolves and the Woodcutter"

Located in Edinburgh, GB

Sometimes stories change and we decide who to fear and who to keep in our hearts. My story is about an all-encompassing love that is so great that it changes people's stories.

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Self-Love is Luxury - Soft Abstract Floral Landscape Painting
Self-Love is Luxury - Soft Abstract Floral Landscape Painting

Self-Love is Luxury - Soft Abstract Floral Landscape Painting

Located in Los Angeles, CA

Drawing inspiration from an immersive and impressionistic interpretation of nature, Canadian artist Vé Boisvert paints textural original artworks that capture the fleeting effects of...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Original Modern Contemporary painting on canvas, Abstract, Fantasy style, Framed
Original Modern Contemporary painting on canvas, Abstract, Fantasy style, Framed

Original Modern Contemporary painting on canvas, Abstract, Fantasy style, Framed

Located in Palm Coast, FL

Up for sale Original Abstract Acrylic Painting on canvas in a fantasy abstract style. A unique technique, very colorful. An unusual combination of colors, a flow from sharp to soft s...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Acrylic

Untitled
Untitled

Roland AyersUntitled, 1982

$960Sale Price|20% Off

Untitled

By Roland Ayers

Located in Wilton Manors, FL

Roland Ayers (1932-2017). Untitled, 1983. Ink on paper, measures 17 x 23 inches. Unframed and unmounted. Signed and dated lower left. Ayers holds the distinction of having participated in the first important survey of African-Americans, Contemporary Black Artists in America, a 1971 show at The Whitney. Biography: Artist and art educator, Roland Ayers was born on July 2, 1932, the only child of Alice and Lorenzo Ayers, and grew up in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Ayers served in the US Army (stationed in Germany) before studying at the Philadelphia College of Art (currently University of the Arts). He graduated with a BFA in Art Education, 1954. He traveled Europe 1966-67, spending time in Amsterdam and Greece in particular. During this period, he drifted away from painting to focus on linear figurative drawings of a surreal nature. His return home inaugurated the artist’s most prolific and inspired period (1968-1975). Shorty before his second major trip abroad in 1971-72 to West Africa, Ayers began to focus on African themes, and African American figures populated his work almost exclusively. In spite of Ayers’ travel and exploration of the world, he gravitated back to his beloved Germantown, a place he endowed with mythological qualities in his work and literature. His auto-biographical writing focuses on the importance of place during his childhood. Ayers’ journals meticulously document the ethnic and cultural make-up of Germantown, and tell a compelling story of class marginalization that brought together poor families despite racial differences. The distinctive look and design of Germantown inform Ayers’ visual vocabulary. It is a setting with distinctive Gothic Revival architecture and haunting natural beauty. These characteristics are translated and recur in the artist’s imagery. During his childhood, one of the only books in the Ayers household was an illustrated Bible. The images within had a profound effect on the themes and subjects that would appear in his adult work. Figures in an Ayers’ drawing often seem trapped in a narrative of loss and redemption. Powerful women loom large in the drawings: they suggest the female role models his journals record in early life. The drawings can sometimes convey a strong sense of conflict, and at other times, harmony. Nature and architecture seem to have an antagonistic relationship that is, ironically, symbiotic. A critical turning point in the artist’s career came in 1971 when he was included in the extremely controversial Whitney Museum show, Contemporary Black Artists in America. The exhibition gave Ayers an international audience and served as a calling card for introductions he would soon make in Europe. Ayers is a particularly compelling figure in a period when black artists struggled with the idea of authenticity. A questioned often asked was “Is your work too black, or not black enough?” Abstractionists were considered by some peers to be sell-outs, frauds or worse. Figurative* work was accused of being either sentimental or politically radical depending on the critical source. Ayers made the choice early on to be a figurative artist, but considered his work devoid of political content. Organizations such as Chicago’ s Afri-Cobra in the late 1960‘s asserted that the only true black art of any relevance must depict the black man and woman...

Category

1980s Abstract Art

Materials

Paper, Ink

Reclining Figure (woman)
Reclining Figure (woman)

Reclining Figure (woman)

By William King (b.1925)

Located in Wilton Manors, FL

William King (1925-2015). Reclining figure, ca. 1965. Cast and welded bronze, 7 x 9.5 x 5 inches. Unsigned. William King, a sculptor in a variety of materials whose human figures traced social attitudes through the last half of the 20th century, often poking sly and poignant fun at human follies and foibles, died on March 4 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 90. His death was confirmed by Scott Chaskey, who is married to Mr. King's stepdaughter, Megan Chaskey. Mr. King worked in clay, wood, bronze, vinyl, burlap and aluminum. He worked both big and small, from busts and toylike figures to large public art pieces depicting familiar human poses -- a seated, cross-legged man reading; a Western couple (he in a cowboy hat, she in a long dress) holding hands; a tall man reaching down to tug along a recalcitrant little boy; a crowd of robotic-looking men walking in lock step. But for all its variation, what unified his work was a wry observer's arched eyebrow, the pointed humor and witty rue of a fatalist. His figurative sculptures, often with long, spidery legs and an outlandishly skewed ratio of torso to appendages, use gestures and posture to suggest attitude and illustrate his own amusement with the unwieldiness of human physical equipment. His subjects included tennis players and gymnasts, dancers and musicians, and he managed to show appreciation of their physical gifts and comic delight at their contortions and costumery. His suit-wearing businessmen often appeared haughty or pompous; his other men could seem timid or perplexed or awkward. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, he tended to depict women more reverentially, though in his portrayals of couples the fragility and tender comedy inherent in couplehood settled equally on both partners. Mr. King's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. But the comic element of his work probably caused his reputation to suffer. Reviews of his exhibitions frequently began with the caveat that even though the work was funny, it was also serious, displaying superior technical skills, imaginative vision and the bolstering weight of a range of influences, from the ancient Etruscans to American folk art to 20th-century artists including Giacometti, Calder. and Elie Nadelman. The critic Hilton Kramer, one of Mr. King's most ardent advocates, wrote in a 1970 essay accompanying a New York gallery exhibit that he was, "among other things, an amusing artist, and nowadays this can, at times, be almost as much a liability as an asset." A "preoccupation with gesture is the focus of King's sculptural imagination," Mr. Kramer wrote. "Everything that one admires in his work - the virtuoso carving, the deft handling of a wide variety of materials, the shrewd observation and resourceful invention - all this is secondary to the concentration on gesture. The physical stance of the human animal as it negotiates the social arena, the unconscious gait that the body assumes in making its way in the social medium, the emotion traced by the course of a limb, a torso, a head, the features of a face, a coiffure or a costume - from a keen observation of these materials King has garnered a large stock of sculptural images notable for their wit, empathy, simplicity and psychological precision." William Dickey King...

Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Art

Materials

Bronze

Zachary
Zachary

Zachary

Located in Toronto, Ontario

Prolific and polemic, William Ronald (1926-1998) is one of the most accomplished and collected artists associated with the Painters Eleven group. Frustrated by the lack of represen...

Category

1990s Abstract Art

Materials

Oil, Acrylic

Spring Bloom II
Spring Bloom II

Spring Bloom II

Located in Zofingen, AG

shipped in roll “Spring Bloom II” captures a quiet moment of connection between two young women surrounded by blooming spring trees. Soft dresses, fresh greens, and gentle light crea...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Nocturne

Nocturne

By Marina Stern

Located in Los Angeles, CA

This work is part of our exhibition Marina Stern Luminary, the first retrospective of the artist since 2007. Marina Stern was a multifaceted New York-based artist whose works range...

Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Spring" Floral Art
"Spring" Floral Art

"Spring" Floral Art

Located in Zofingen, AG

Abstract textured acrylic painting on canvas 90x90x2 cm (35,4 x 35,4 x0,8inches). Mixed Media on gallery wrapped canvas. The work is ready to hang. No framing required. The sides of ...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Spray Paint, Acrylic

Hidden Portraits I
Hidden Portraits I

Hidden Portraits I

Located in London, GB

'Hidden Portraits I', acrylic on canvas mounted on board, Florentine School (circa 1980s-90s). This gallery has acquired a number of paintings through an intermediary of an ageing ar...

Category

1980s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Unfolding
Unfolding

Unfolding

Located in Zofingen, AG

This work embodies the state of opening oneself to new experience. “Unfolding” is the moment of meeting your own strength and vulnerability at once — where chaos transforms into harm...

Category

2010s Abstract Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

The Hush of Winter, Abstract Oil Painting
The Hush of Winter, Abstract Oil Painting

The Hush of Winter, Abstract Oil Painting

By Jenn Williamson

Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
A quiet, enveloping atmosphere emerges. The abstract scene evokes the stillness of winter days when hushed sound and landscape rest within a veil of calm. Subtl...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Art

Materials

Oil

Vintage American Modernist Abstract Expressionist Framed MCM Oil Painting
Vintage American Modernist Abstract Expressionist Framed MCM Oil Painting

Vintage American Modernist Abstract Expressionist Framed MCM Oil Painting

Located in Buffalo, NY

Vintage American modernist abstract oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Provenance from a Sag Harbor, NY collection. Measuring: 15 by 19 inches overall. Handsomely framed in...

Category

1940s Abstract Art

Materials

Oil

Gaia 8 - Diptych Monochrome Photograph Catalonian Nature Grass Imagery

Gaia 8 - Diptych Monochrome Photograph Catalonian Nature Grass Imagery

Located in Brighton, GB

Gaia 8 - Diptych Monochrome Photograph Catalonian Nature Grass Imagery by Jaume Llorens Bach Gaia 8 is a 18cm x 24cm Black-and-White print on Premio Kozo 180gsm White Paper by Awaga...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, Black and White, Digital

Abstract art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Abstract art 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 art 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 Sumit Mehndiratta, Giorgio Lo Fermo, Francisco Nicolás, and Dadodu . Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Synthetic Resin Paint 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 art, so small editions measuring 0.02 inches across are also available.