Cosmos Kandinsky. Geometric abstraction in the 20th century
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| Museum Barberini
Top Event
Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th
Century spans six decades and showcases how Geometric Abstraction found
radical expression in all its variations in Europe and the USA.
Image gallery
Wassily Kandinsky Weisses Kreuz
Ellsworth Kelly Blue Yellow
Bridhet Riley, Shih-Li
At the beginning of the 20th century, painting underwent a
profound transformation.
Artists no longer wanted to depict the visible; they
aspired to a new visual language that reduced artistic expression to an
interplay of colors, lines, and shapes. Geometric Abstraction viewed these
elements as a visual language that reflected the modern world and transcended
national boundaries.
Inspired by the advanced technologies and theories of their
time, including concepts of the fourth dimension and the space-time continuum,
artists expanded their understanding of space and time.
With images of
geometric shapes floating in indefinite space, they sought to represent cosmic
themes and higher spiritual levels. A central figure of this art movement was
Wassily Kandinsky, who laid the theoretical foundations with his work Point
and Line to Plane.
The exhibition features more than 100 works by over seventy
artists, including
Josef Albers,
Sonia Delaunay,
Barbara Hepworth,
Wassily
Kandinsky,
El Lissitzky,
Agnes Martin,
Piet Mondrian,
Bridget Riley,
Frank
Stella,
and Victor Vasarely.
The more than thirty international lenders include
the Tate and the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Whitney Museum of American
Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.