Mario Radice On Sale

The Italian painter Mario Radice was considered one of the leaders of abstract art. He began his artistic training with painter Achille Zambelli and sculptor Pietro Clerici. After a military parenthesis and a job as an accountant for a railway company, Radice attended his uncle Guido Vitali, general manager of the paper mills in Fabriano, and thus became familiar with the qualities of the paper and soon founded the company Mario Radice & C., based in Bergamo. In February 1930, settling in Como and deciding to devote himself exclusively to painting, he cultivated his first studio in Como on Via delle Cinque Giornate, shared with Rho. Their fellowship, which was joined by the younger Giuseppe Terragni, formed the first nucleus of the so-called Como Group, a group of personalities oriented towards the renewal of the arts and architecture — as far from the liberty as from the Novecento style — operating between Como and Milan in the name of a fruitful international opening. He also designed furniture for the firm Augusto and Filippo Proserpio of Mariano Comense, obtaining the first prize in 1933 at the National Craft Show in Florence. He was one of the founders of the Quadrante publishing company and of the magazine of the same name, directed by Massimo Bontempelli and Pier Maria Bardi and close to the Il Milione gallery. Between 1939 and 1943, he worked hard on investigations and projects for modern and functional churches, but the impressive project was interrupted by the death of Cattaneo. In the ‘40s, he was an almost permanent guest at the Venice International Biennale and collaborated in the foundation of the Concrete Art Movement. In the meantime, he also engaged in the activity of art critic for some newspapers and held private drawing lessons and his life continued in continuous successes and tireless work.

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.

Explore a vast range of abstract prints on 1stDibs to find a piece to enhance your existing collection or transform a space.

Unlike figurative paintings and other figurative art, which focuses on realism and representational perspectives, abstract art concentrates on visual interpretation. An artist may use a single color or simple geometric forms to create a world of depth. Printmaking has a rich history of abstraction. Through materials like stone, metal, wood and wax, an image can be transferred from one surface to another.

During the 19th century, iconic artists, including Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georgiana Houghton and others, began exploring works based on shapes and colors. This was a departure from the academic conventions of European painting and would influence the rise of 20th-century abstraction and its pioneers, like Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.

Some leaders of European abstraction, including Franz Kline, were influenced by the gestural shapes of East Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy interprets poetry, songs, symbols or other means of storytelling into art, from works on paper in Japan to elements of Islamic architecture.

Bold, daring and expressive, abstract art is constantly evolving and dazzling viewers. And entire genres have blossomed from it, such as Color Field painting and Minimalism.

The collection of abstract art prints on 1stDibs includes etchings, lithographs, screen-prints and other works, and you can find prints by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and more.