Magazine

Abstraction-Création: A Pioneering Force in Modern Art

The Abstraction-Création movement, founded in 1931, was a critical turning point in the evolution of abstract art in Europe. At a time when Surrealism dominated the avant-garde and political ideolo...

Serious And Not-So-Serious: Pierre Muckensturm in 14 Questions

At IdeelArt, we believe an artist’s story is told both inside and outside the studio. In this series, we pose 14 questions that bridge the gap between creative vision and everyday life, mixing prof...

Jean Tinguely and His Metamechanics

We each have our own unique relationship with machines. Some of us relate to machines with gratitude, joyfully relying on them for their efficient, utilitarian services. Others of us use them only...

Concrete Art: A Collector's Guide to the Art of Absolute Clarity

In the lexicon of art history, few terms are as misunderstood as "Concrete Art." To the uninitiated, the word implies weight, solidity, or perhaps the grey industrial material itself. In the art w...

Serious And Not-so-serious: Kyong Lee in 14 Questions

At IdeelArt, we believe an artist’s story is told both inside and outside the studio. In this series, we pose 14 questions that bridge the gap between creative vision and everyday life, mixing prof...

The Neo Supports/Surfaces: A Manifesto for Material Realism in the 21st Century

In the cartography of art history, movements usually have a clear beginning and an end. They burn bright, fade, and eventually migrate into the quiet archives of museums. Supports/Surfaces, born in...

The Fervent Abstraction of Olivier Debré

Olivier Debré (1920–1999) stands as a pivotal figure in postwar French abstraction. His artistic journey is a testament to the power of painting as a way to express emotion without using descripti...

Painting with Scissors - Why We Love Henri Matisse Cut Outs

The final artwork by Henri Matisse can not be found in a museum. It is a window, dubbed the rose window, high on a rear wall of Union Church in Pocantico Hills, a riverside hamlet 25 miles north o...

Serious And Not-So-Serious: Martin Reyna in 14 Questions

At IdeelArt, we believe an artist’s story is told both inside and outside the studio. In this series, we pose 14 questions that bridge the gap between creative vision and everyday life, mixing prof...

Geometric Abstraction: NOT Another Heroic Tale of Malevich and Mondrian

Why straight lines still matter Geometric abstraction is one of those art histories everyone thinks they know. A few squares by Malevich, a Mondrian in primary colors, some Op Art that makes your e...

The Growing Tree of Emotions: Nikolaos Schizas’ Ever-Evolving Series

Nikolaos Schizas, a Barcelona-based artist, has become one of the most prolific and sought-after abstract painters of his generation. Despite only beginning his professional career in 2020, Schizas...

Did You Get the Message? How Abstract Artists Communicate Environmental Urgency

Without a figure, without a narrative, without literal representation: how do you pass a message in visual art? This is the activist's dilemma in abstract art, and it explains why truly activist ab...

The Double-Edged Canvas: Bipolarity and the Fire of Abstract Creation

If you were to trace a lineage of modern art, you would find it illuminated by a peculiar and potent fire. It is the fire that burned in Vincent van Gogh’s swirling skies, dripped from Jackson Poll...

The Language of Feeling: Artists Who Paint Pure Emotions

What if a painting could speak directly to your soul without showing you a single recognizable thing? What if color and form alone could make you feel joy, melancholy, or transcendence as powerfull...

Damien Hirst: The Ultimate Guide to Britain's Most Provocative Contemporary Artist

Damien Hirst stands as one of the most controversial and influential figures in contemporary art, whose revolutionary approach to mortality, science, and commerce has fundamentally transformed the ...

10 South American Abstract Artists to Watch in 2025

South American abstract art is experiencing a remarkable renaissance, propelled by unprecedented market validation and global institutional recognition. This resurgence is not merely curatorial tre...

The Neuroscience of Beauty: How Artists Create Happiness

For centuries, philosophers and artists have sought to define the nature of "beauty." Thinkers such as Plato and Kant conceptualized beauty as a transcendent idea or an aesthetic experience detache...

Henri Matisse’s The Snail and the Key Qualities of Abstract Art

“The Snail” (1953) was completed the year before Matisse died. It is considered his last major “cut-out,” and also, a masterpiece. To Matisse, though, who was tireless in his prolific output, it w...

Five Noteworthy Sculptures by Anthony Caro

When he died in 2013, Anthony Caro was considered the most influential British sculptor of his generation. His influence stemmed from both his work, and from his teaching. Two days a week from 195...

Very Painterly Abstract Artists: The New Alchemists

In his Heidelberg studio, Arvid Boecker (featured image) scrapes methodically across his canvas with a screen printing squeegee. Layer by layer, he builds what he calls an "archaeology of color." E...

Gerhard Richter Art Guide: Complete History, Works & Market Value (2025)

Explore Gerhard Richter's complete artistic journey, from his groundbreaking photo-paintings to record-breaking abstracts. Learn about his techniques, famous works, and market impact in this compre...

Auguste Herbin: The Architect of Abstraction and His Lasting Legacy

Auguste Herbin, born on April 29, 1882, in Quievy, France, was a major figure in the abstract art movement, especially during the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his role in develop...

Minimalism in Abstract Art: A Journey Through History and Contemporary Expressions

Minimalism has captivated the art world with its clarity, simplicity, and focus on the essentials. Emerging as a reaction against the expressive intensity of earlier movements like Abstract Expres...

Notes and Reflections on Rothko in Paris­ by Dana Gordon

Paris was cold. But it still had its satisfying allure, beauty all around. The grand Mark Rothko exhibition is in a new museum in the snowy Bois de Boulogne, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a flashy ...

Mark Rothko: The Master of Color in Search of The Human Drama

A key protagonist of Abstract Expressionism and color field painting, Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970) was one of the most influential 20th-century painters whose works deeply spoke, and still do, to the...

Illuminating the Canvas: Anna Eva Bergman's Luminous Journey through Artistic Landscapes

Born in 1909 to Swedish and Norwegian parents, Anna Eva Bergman demonstrated an early knack for drawing. She later honed her talent at Oslo's School of Applied Arts and Vienna’s School of Applied ...

From Painting to Drawing: Richter's Creative Evolution in the Pandemic Era

A buzz percolates around a recent exhibition in New York claiming Gerhard Richter completed his last paintings between 2016 and 2017. Since 2017, the legend of his own brand of abstraction and uni...

Girls Rule Contemporary Abstraction

The quest to find emerging female abstract painters at galleries, museums and fairs can be daunting. Many girl painters are drawn to figuration and a narrative. Recently, passing WINDOW on Walker ...

Sterling Ruby: The TURBINE Trailblazer

Sterling Ruby looks like the kind of Los Angeles artist you would expect; Dutch American surfer good looks with a Kurt Cobain grunge edge. He’s that super cool dude/artist you love to hate and hat...

Monet - Mitchell. Toward an Abstract Impressionism.

Much more than a visual comparison between pictorial languages: in the fall of 2022, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris places Impressionist master Claude Monet (1840-1926) and American abstrac...

Simon Hantaï. Between Invisibility and the Persistence of Vision

Simon Hantaï is the painter of absence, invisibility, and withdrawal. The essence of his art can be captured in the empty spaces between one color and another, in his pictorial and conceptual inte...

The Exuberant Abstraction of Shirley Jaffe

This spring, the Centre Pompidou is honoring the remarkable abstract painter Shirley Jaffe with the retrospective exhibition aptly named An American Woman in Paris. For Shirley, a New Jersey nativ...

Carmen Herrera - A Flourishing Long Overdue

Carmen Herrera (May 30, 1915-February 12, 2022) was a Cuban-American artist, renowned for her abstract minimalist compositions and geometric application of color. Her recent death has brought abou...

Pink Abstraction

The color pink is all around us: in the sensual curves of a mouth; in the innocence of a valentine; in the leaves of the sacred Sakura; in a glass of rosé at a Roman cafe. Pink is essential to the...

Joseph Beuys - An Artistic Healer For The Generations

Sculptor, teacher, mentor, pioneering environmentalist, political activist, self-styled shaman, and an alleged charlatan of questionable character - Joseph Beuys was most certainly a man who wore ...

Action Painting or a Glimpse into the Emotions

The term “Action Painting” was coined by art critic Harold Rosenberg in his 1952 essay “The American Action Painters.” Rather than discussing paintings in terms of their “objectness,” or in terms ...

Women in American Abstraction, 1930-1950

American abstract artists faced many hurdles throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Entering a discipline still dominated by realism and ruled by powerful art critics and institutions, abstract artists h...

Picasso’s Daughter is Donating 9 Artworks to The Musée Picasso

Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was a pioneer of the Cubism art movement — a kind of abstraction that utilizes geometric shapes to portray a subject. Examples of his famous works include The Weeping ...

8 Contemporary Abstract Artists To Watch in 2021

2020 was truly apocalyptic, in the original sense of the word: meaning it was a year of revelation about who and what we are. Moving forward, I am curious to know who else, and what else, we might...

The Art of Displaying Multiple Perspectives

When a painting consists of two panels, it can be considered a diptych. The term comes from the late Greek words diptukha (two writing tablets) or diptukhos (folded in half). The tradition of dipt...

Sophie Taeuber-Arp - A Major Female Force of Dadaism and Concrete art

Bold and dynamic, Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943), née Taeuber, was a major female force in the European avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Concrete art. Her career spanned two world wars and ush...

How Painters Eleven Members Brought Abstract Art to Canada

Active between 1953 and 1960, Painters Eleven (P11) was a short-lived but hugely influential group of eleven Canadian abstract artists who took a leading role in Canada’s post-war art world. While...

A Look at Vasudeo S. Gaitonde's Burgeoning Art Market

Indian artist Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde has appeared in the art media repeatedly over the past decade, always in the context of auction records. Paintings by Gaitonde routinely sell for millions of d...

A Kandinsky Masterpiece To Be Sold at Sotheby's After Half a Century

In 1964, Sotheby’s made news by auctioning 50 Wassily Kandinsky paintings from the collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim. The American businessman and founder of both the Solomon R. Guggenheim Found...

In the Dark

In visual art, darkness is the result of many factors: the interplay of hue and tint; the reflective qualities of a medium or a surface; the way light interacts with texture. But is darkness only ...

Following The Curves of Tony Cragg's Sculpture

Works by renowned British abstract artist Tony Cragg are on view this summer at Houghton Hall, a lavish British country estate currently occupied by David George Philip, the 7th Marquess of Cholmo...

How to Take Up Abstract Painting in Your Older Years

No matter who you are, you probably wanted to take up art at some point in your life but couldn’t because you didn’t have the time or resources to dedicate yourself to it properly. But now you’re ...

How Drawing Revitalized Post-War America - at MoMA

With COVID restrictions in New York lifting, several museum shows whose runs were extended during the pandemic shutdown are beckoning. Among the best for fans of abstraction is Degree Zero: Drawin...