Sofie Swann

Born in Tehran, abstract painter Sofie Swann escaped the Iranian revolution at a young age and subsequently lived in the United States and France. Keeping her heritage close, Swann uses Persian tea in varying amounts as a subtle nod to her roots. The sepia tones are, at times, a faint addition, though this trademark signature creates a sense of place in every work she makes. 

Swann spent time studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston where she explored landscapes and portraiture. Through experimentation, she developed a passion for abstract and minimalist art. While later living in Paris, she discovered key influential artists including Vincent van Gogh, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama. 

As a process of self-discovery and self-expression, her paintings take the form of visual autobiographies, telling a narrative of memories, both real and imagined, and the emotion she draws from remembering them. Swann prefers not to sketch intentional designs before beginning a painting and rather lets the work evolve organically. “My thoughts and emotions. That’s where it all starts,” she said in an interview with Sorelle Gallery. “I don’t paint what I see. I paint what I feel.”

Since 2015, Swann has exhibited in solo and in groups around the United States, including at Chroma Fine Art Gallery in Katonah, New York; Silvermine Galleries and the Carriage Barn Arts Center, both in New Canaan, Connecticut; and Sorelle Gallery in Westport, Connecticut.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Sofie Swann’s prints, paintings, mixed media and more.

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.