The Path to Abstraction: Color & Composition – How to Create Abstract Paintings by Learning from the Masters

It was only as I researched this article, that I realized how little information is available for painters wanting to pursue studies in abstract painting. Most articles and online lessons focus on representative painting – as if the creation of abstract art or any of its variations, such as abstract expressionism, is too simplistic to warrant instruction. Many of the same principles of composition and color apply to abstract art and are more important. The success of your painting depends on focusing on design, geometry, colors and emotion.

Abstract art uses forms having no direct reference to external or perceived reality. It also refers to images that have been abstracted or derived from nature. In the creative process, they have been altered or simplified to their basic geometric forms. The painter that I most admire for his ability to simplify his subjects to their purest lines is Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). It is not the familiar images of his later period, such as Broadway Boogie-Woogie,” 1942, which captures my admiration – rather it is the creative process that developed his work to that joyous painting that I admire.

Mondrian’s earliest paintings, dating from the 1890’s, exhibit a stark, conventional naturalism combined with with the Dutch landscape tradition. The next stage, from 1900 through 1907, shows various influences including Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, and the Fauves.

His development toward abstract began in 1908 with a remarkable series of paintings involving an obsessive image: a solitary tree. This series gained attention for its apparently systematic, almost seamless progression from realism to abstraction. This progression continued until his death in 1944 and is is demonstrated, to a limited extent, at the gallery of Modrian images. Start with “Flowering Apple Tree,” 1912, – part of the tree series. If you progress through the images, by date, you’ll have some idea of the development of his work. Cubism influenced his work, in 1912 while he lived in Paris, as he further purified planes. By 1914, he was unifying the canvas surface with criss-crossing horizontal and verticals. Between 1917 and 1920, he arrived at the more familiar images of his body of work: the yellow, red, blue, and black planes of Neoplasticism. Experience what it’s like to create a Mondrian and experiment with his principles of color and space by creating your own art on this interactive site.

As Mondrian’s work became abstract, his palette became brighter and bolder but the very last period of his life might give some indication of what we missed by his death. Mondrian might well have been the first Abstract Expressionist – “Broadway Bogie-Woogie” was his most light-hearted work, not only in terms of fanciful colors but in the pure joy he “expressed” in his love of jazz music.

For Wassily Kandinsky, color possessed an inner sound to which he was very sensitive. He was also very sensitive to the trends in modern architecture and technology. His abstract art developed into a world of brilliant color where forms soar and hover and trace trajectories in space. Beyond a doubt, he was a master of color and imagination. His development can be traced via the sixteen images on this site and the interpretations of his work. The article, “Kandinsky and Abstraction.”

Learning to see the abstract around you

Learning to “see” the abstract in the world around you takes practice. One of Paul Cézanne‘s favorite expressions was, “To realize my sensation” – to realize a world within the picture is what he meant. As his paintings moved towards abstraction his method consisted mainly in discovering, simplifying, and abstracting the basic forms. This network of basic forms – the cube, cone, and cylinders – became the prominent focus and composed his paintings.

Cézanne’s work became progressively more geometric, both in composition and simplicity as his career developed. Although I am not a great lover of computer art, here‘s a use for your graphics programs that we help you visualize abstractly. Use your computer to to alter your realistic work, photographs, or the paintings of the Masters so that you can explore geometric composition and color.

It’s scary, but the thinking process to see the world as Mondrian did can now be accomplished on a computer – although nothing can ever compare to his vision.

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