Abstract & Non-Objective Art: Artists, Paintings, Characteristics & Picture Study

Abstract art challenged one of the most fundamental assumptions about art: that a painting had to represent something recognizable in the visible world. For centuries, artists had largely focused on depicting people, landscapes, and scenes from history or religion. Even when artists experimented with style and technique, their work generally remained connected to recognizable subjects.

As modern art developed, however, artists began exploring a different possibility: what if color, line, and shape could become the subject of a painting themselves? Rather than depicting a familiar scene, an artwork could express movement, rhythm, harmony, energy, spirituality, or emotion through the arrangement of visual elements alone. Art no longer needed to imitate the visible world to communicate meaning; it could create an experience through color and form.

Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, and Paul Klee helped develop new approaches to abstraction during the early decades of the 20th century. Their experiments helped establish abstract and non-objective art as major forces in modern art.

In this guide, we’ll explore the development of abstract art, the difference between abstract and non-objective art, important movements, famous abstract artists and paintings, and picture study suggestions you can use with children or students.

What Is Abstract Art?

Abstract art moves away from depicting the visible world as it appears. Artists may simplify or distort familiar objects, rearrange shapes, exaggerate colors, flatten space, or reduce subjects to basic geometric forms. Some abstract works retain recognizable elements, while others move so far from their original subjects that the connection is difficult to identify.

Abstract art exists along a spectrum, ranging from realistic representations to simplified forms, highly abstract compositions, and completely non-objective art that does not depict recognizable people, places, or objects.

What Is Non-Objective Art?

.Non-objective art takes abstraction a step further by moving entirely away from recognizable subjects. Rather than simplifying or distorting something from the visible world, artists create compositions using elements such as lines, shapes, colors, patterns, and textures.

A painting made up of red squares, black lines, yellow circles, and blue rectangles, for example, may not represent any physical object or scene. Instead, the arrangement of colors and shapes forms the subject of the artwork itself.

Often described as non-representational art or pure abstraction, non-objective art demonstrates that a painting does not need to depict recognizable people, places, or objects to stand as a complete work of art.

Abstract Art vs. Non-Objective Art

These terms are often used interchangeably, but there is a useful distinction. Abstract art may begin with something from the visible world and then simplify it, distort it, rearrange it, or reduce it. In the end though, you may still recognize the original subject.

Non-objective art, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily represent anything recognizable. It may consist entirely of color, line, shape, or form.

A helpful way to remember the difference abstract art can transform a recognizable image of something, whereas non-objective art doesn’t have to depict anything specific at all.

When Did Abstract Art Begin?

Abstraction did not suddenly appear on one particular day, artists gradually moved toward it. Technically the Abstract art era can be placed approximately between 1910–1944. However, the timeline of events that led to the art movement stretch back even furth, creating as a broad period for the early development of abstract and non-objective art.

1870s–1890s: Impressionists began loosening brushwork and emphasizing color and light.

1880s–1900s: Post-Impressionists such as Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin altered color, shape, and perspective.

1905–1908: Fauvist artists liberated color from realistic representation.

1907–1914: Cubists broke recognizable objects into simple geometric forms.

Around 1910: Artists such as Kandinsky moved toward paintings with little or no recognizable subject matter.

1910s–1930s: Different forms of abstraction developed across Europe and Russia.

1940s: Abstract art became more important internationally and helped prepare the way for Abstract Expressionism in the United States.

Historical Background and Timeline of Abstract Art

Abstract art developed as artists moved further and further away from traditional art forms.They began by using colors that didn’t match reality, then experimented with perspective and simplified the shapes of familiar objects. Eventually, some artists took the next step and removed recognizable subjects altogether, making color, shape, and form the focus of their work.

1870s: Impressionism Changes Painting

Impressionists emphasized brushwork, color, light, and atmosphere, rather than polished photographic realism.

1880s–1900s: Post-Impressionism Pushes it Further

Van Gogh used color emotionally, Cézanne simplified objects into geometric forms, and Gauguin flattened shapes and used symbolic color. These experiments became important foundations for abstraction.

1905: Fauvism Liberates Color

Matisse and other Fauves demonstrated that a painting did not need realistic color.

1907: Cubism Begins Breaking Apart Form

Picasso and Braque challenged traditional perspective, making objects more fractured, flattened, and geometric.

Around 1910: Kandinsky Moves Toward Abstraction

Wassily Kandinsky believed that color and form could communicate directly, much like music, and so his works became more and more abstract.

1911: Der Blaue Reiter Forms

Kandinsky and Franz Marc helped establish the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter. Spirituality, symbolism, color, and abstraction became very important.

1912: Kandinsky Publishes Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Kandinsky argued that color and form could communicate spiritual and emotional experiences.

1913: Malevich Develops Radical Geometric Abstraction

Russian artist Kazimir Malevich moved toward extremely simplified geometric compositions.

1915: Malevich Exhibits Black Square

A black square on a white ground became one of the most radical images in modern art.

1917: De Stijl Is Founded

Dutch artists including Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg developed a highly ordered geometric abstraction.

1919: Bauhaus Is Founded

The Bauhaus school in Germany brought together art, architecture, design, and craft. Artists such as Kandinsky and Paul Klee taught there.

1920s: Mondrian Develops His Mature Style

Mondrian reduced painting to vertical and horizontal lines, rectangles, and restricted palettes such as primary colors, and black and white.

1920s–1930s: Abstraction Spreads

Abstract art spread internationally as artists explored geometry, color, and movement in art.

1933: Bauhaus Closes

The Nazi regime forced the Bauhaus to close. Many artists and teachers eventually left Germany, helping spread modernist ideas internationally.

1930s–1940s: European Artists Move Abroad

Political upheaval and World War II displaced many European artists. As a result, New York became an important center for modern art. These developments helped prepare the way for Abstract Expressionism after World War II.

Characteristics of Abstract Art

Because abstraction appears in many different forms, there is no single style. There are, however, several characteristics that tend to appear.

1. Simplified Designs

Artists may reduce objects to basic shapes, lines, and colors. A tree might be portrayed as a vertical line with circles. A face could be a simple geometric plane. A city may become rectangles.

2. Geometric Shapes

Abstract art frequently uses circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, and lines. Some artists created extremely precise geometric compositions.

3. Unnatural Color

Colors don’t need to match reality. Instead, artists might choose colors for balance, emotion, symbolism, or contrast.

4. Flattened Space

Traditional perspective might disappear. Rather than looking through a window into a three-dimensional world, viewers become aware of the flat surface of the artwork.

5. Rhythm

Shapes and colors can repeat like musical beats. Artists may create visual rhythm through repetition, alternating shapes, color patterns, and repeated lines.

6. Movement

Lines and shapes can create the illusion of flowing movement, so that the artwork itself seems to leap off the canvas.

7. Balance

Abstract artists often carefully organize visual weight, so a small dark shape may balance a large pale shape.

8. Color Relationships

Artists explored what happens when colors are placed beside one another, and so color itself can became the subject.

9. Emotion

Abstract art was often made communicate a mood without recognizable imagery, so a composition could feel joyful or tense, calm or chaotic.

10. Experimentation

Abstract artists continually asked, “How much can I remove and still create a meaningful artwork?”

Kandinsky and the Birth of Abstraction

Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most influential pioneers of abstract art. He believed painting could communicate emotion just like music could. A melody can make us feel joyful, peaceful, tense, or excited, and Kandinsky wondered if color, line, and shape could have a similar effect.

His work gradually moved away from recognizable subjects, and he focused instead on the relationships between colors, circles, geometric shapes, and sweeping lines. Rather than illustrating a particular scene or object, Kandinsky arranged these elements to create a visual experience of his own.

When looking at his abstract paintings, we can move beyond asking what the artwork represents and consider how its colors, shapes, and movement affect the way we feel.

Piet Mondrian and Geometric Abstraction

Piet Mondrian took a different path toward abstract art. His early paintings depicted recognizable subjects, including trees, landscapes, and windmills. Over time though, he began simplifying these forms, reducing the branches of trees to lines and the divisions of landscapes into geometric patterns. As his work became more abstract, natural colors and recognizable details gave way to a more limited visual imagery.

Mondrian eventually developed a distinctive style that focused on vertical and horizontal black lines, rectangular shapes, and primary colors. Although his mature paintings may appear simple at first glance, every line, shape, and color plays a deliberate role in the composition.

Through this approach, Mondrian explored balance, proportion, harmony, and rhythm. His work demonstrates how a limited number of visual elements can create a carefully structured composition, where simplicity is the result of thoughtful decisions rather than a lack of complexity.

Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism

Russian artist Kazimir Malevich took geometric abstraction in a radical new direction with an art movement known as Suprematism. He believed painting could move beyond the representation of recognizable objects and focus instead on the expressive power of basic geometric forms.

His compositions featured simple shapes, including squares, rectangles, circles, and crosses, arranged against open backgrounds. Rather than depicting people, landscapes, or familiar scenes, Malevich explored how these forms could stand on their own as works of art.

His most famous painting, Black Square (1915), consists of a black square against a white background. At a time when many viewers expected paintings to portray recognizable subjects, this stark composition challenged traditional ideas about what art could be. Malevich proposed that shape, color, and composition could hold artistic meaning without representing anything in the physical world.

De Stijl

De Stijl, meaning “The Style” in Dutch, emerged in the Netherlands in 1917. Artists associated with the movement wanted to create a universal visual language by reducing art to its most basic elements. They worked with horizontal and vertical lines, rectangular forms, and a limited palette of primary colors, black, and white.

Two of the movement’s most important figures were Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Through carefully arranged lines, shapes, and colors, they explored balance, order, and harmony without relying on recognizable subjects. Their ideas extended beyond painting into architecture, furniture, and graphic design, leaving a lasting mark on modern design.

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was a German school of art and design founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919. Although abstract art played an important role in its teaching, the school’s ambitions reached far beyond painting. Its goal was to bring fine art, architecture, craftsmanship, and industrial design together, creating objects and spaces that combined beauty with practical purpose.

Artists associated with the Bauhaus included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, and László Moholy-Nagy. They explored how geometric forms, color, typography, photography, and materials could shape the appearance and function of everyday objects. The school’s emphasis on simplicity, experimentation, and thoughtful design profoundly influenced modern architecture, furniture, and graphic design.

Robert and Sonia Delaunay: Color and Movement

Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay explored abstraction through the expressive power of color. Their work is associated with Orphism, an early 20th-century movement that emphasized vibrant color, rhythmic patterns, and the sense of movement created by contrasting hues. Unlike Piet Mondrian’s more restricted palette, the Delaunays embraced brilliant colors arranged in circles, arcs, and overlapping geometric forms.

Their compositions demonstrate how colors can interact to create a sense of energy and movement, even without depicting a recognizable subject. Sonia Delaunay also carried these ideas beyond painting into clothing, textiles, books, and interior design. Her work offers a particularly clear example of how abstract art can influence the objects and patterns that surround us in everyday life.

Paul Klee and Imagination

Paul Klee developed a distinctive approach to modern art that blended abstraction with imagination and recognizable imagery. His paintings often combine geometric shapes, expressive lines, symbols, and unexpected colors with forms inspired by the world around him. Some works are highly abstract, while others suggest cities, faces, gardens, machines, or maps.

Rather than fitting neatly into the categories of realistic or completely abstract art, Klee’s work often occupies a space between the two. He simplified familiar subjects, transformed them into playful arrangements of shapes, or invented visual worlds that seemed to emerge from his imagination. His paintings demonstrate how abstraction can move beyond the visible world while still drawing on recognizable forms, personal experiences, and ideas.

Famous Abstract & Non-Objective Artists

Famous Abstract Paintings

Composition VIII — Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky combines circles, triangles, lines, and arcs in a carefully balanced composition that resembles a visual arrangement of musical notes. The painting demonstrates how geometric forms and contrasting colors can create rhythm and movement without depicting a recognizable scene.

Several Circles — Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky fills a dark background with circles of different sizes and colors, some overlapping and others appearing to float independently. Their varied colors, transparencies, and arrangements create a sense of depth and movement within an otherwise simple geometric composition.

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow — Piet Mondrian

Mondrian arranges black horizontal and vertical lines around blocks of white, red, blue, and yellow, creating a carefully balanced composition. By limiting his visual elements, he explored how proportion, placement, and color could create harmony without representing the physical world.

Black Square — Kazimir Malevich

Malevich’s Black Square presents a single black square against a white background, stripping painting down to its most basic forms. A landmark of Suprematism, the work challenged traditional expectations that art should depict recognizable subjects or tell a story.

Castle and Sun — Paul Klee

Klee builds a whimsical cityscape from colorful geometric shapes, with a bright sun hovering above the clustered buildings. The painting blends recognizable architecture with abstraction, showing how simple shapes and imaginative arrangements can transform an ordinary subject into something unusual.

Simultaneous Windows on the City — Robert Delaunay

Delaunay breaks the view of a city through a window into overlapping patches of vivid color and fragmented shapes. Rather than presenting a clear, realistic scene, he explores how light and color can capture the experience of looking at the modern urban world.

Electric Prisms — Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay uses overlapping circles and vibrant bands of contrasting color to evoke the glow of electric streetlights and the energy of Paris at night. The painting demonstrates her interest in how colors interact to create rhythm, movement, and a sense of modern life.

Abstract Art vs. Cubism

Cubism played an important role in the development of abstraction. Cubist artists usually began with a recognizable object, then they fractured, simplified, and rearranged them. Abstract art, however, simplified recognizable objects even further. Eventually, recognizable objects disappeared completely. In essence, Cubism fractured, Abstraction reduced, and Non-objective art let go of the object entirely.

Abstract Art vs. Expressionism

Expressionism and abstraction often overlap as well. Expressionist artists changed reality to communicate emotion, inner experience, and psychological intensity. Abstract artists removed recognizable imagery altogether. Kandinsky himself stands a link between the art eras, since he had a significant hand in both. His early works are part of the Expressionism movement, while his later paintings were abstract.

Abstract & Non-Objective Art Picture Study Suggestions

Wassily Kandinsky Picture Study

1. Composition VII
2. Composition VIII
3. Yellow-Red-Blue
4. Several Circles
5. Improvisation 28
6. Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles

Piet Mondrian Picture Study

1. Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow
2. Broadway Boogie Woogie
3. Victory Boogie Woogie
4. The Red Tree
5. Composition No.II

Kazimir Malevich Picture Study

1. Black Square
2. White on White
3. Suprematist Composition (1916)
4. Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles
5. Black Cross
6. Red Square

Paul Klee Picture Study

1. Senecio
2. Castle and Sun
3. Red Balloon
4. Black Knight
5. Twittering Machine
6. Cat and Bird

Robert Delaunay Picture Study

1. Champs de Mars: The Red Tower
2. Rhythm
3. Homage to Blériot
4. Tall Portuguese Woman
5. Le Premier Disque
6. Political Drama

Sonia Delaunay Picture Study

1. Electric Prisms
2. Rythme
3. Flamenco Dancer
4. Simultaneous Dress
5. Market at Minho
6. Dubonnet

How to Do a Simple Abstract Art Picture Study

Choose one painting and allow your child to look at it for several minutes. Remove the painting from view, then ask the child to describe the painting from memory. Afterward, look at the artwork again and notice anything that was missed.

Some questions you could ask could be:

You might ask:

• Which color did you notice first?
• What is the largest shape?
• Which shapes repeat?
• Where does your eye go next?
• Does anything appear to move?
• Is the composition balanced?
• Does it feel calm or energetic?
• Are the lines straight or curved?
• What would happen if one shape disappeared?
• Does the painting remind you of anything even if it isn’t actually a picture of that thing?

Abstract art teaches children to look at the elements of art themselves.

How to Recognize Abstract & Non-Objective Art

Look for simplified objects. Can you recognize something from reality, but only barely? That may be abstraction.

Look for geometric shapes. Do circles, rectangles, lines, and triangles dominate?

Look for unrealistic color. Color may be chosen for relationships rather than realism.

Look for flattened space. Traditional perspective may disappear.

Look for rhythm and repetition. Shapes may repeat like beats in music.

Look for no recognizable subject at all. If the artwork consists entirely of shapes, colors, and lines, it may be non-objective.

Easy Abstract Art Activities for Students

Abstract a Tree. Draw a realistic tree, then draw it again with fewer details. Draw it a third time using only lines, rectangles, and circles. See how far you can simplify it while still remembering the tree.

Make Kandinsky Music Art. Play instrumental music. Try to visualize the music using lines, colors, and shapes. Try changing your marks when the music changes.

Create a Mondrian Composition. Use

• vertical black lines
• horizontal black lines
• red
• yellow
• blue
• white

Arrange rectangles in different sizes and pay attention to balance.

Create a Klee-Inspired City. Use only squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles, and experiment with color relationships.

Make a Delaunay Circle Design. Overlap circles, semicircles, and arcs. Fill the shapes with contrasting colors.

Create Non-Objective Art. Don’t draw a recognizable object, instead create something made up only of lines, shapes, and colors.

Compare Realistic and Abstract Art. Choose one subject and paint it realistically. Then simplify it, then abstract it, and finally, create a completely non-objective composition inspired by the same colors.

Frequently Asked Questions About Abstract & Non-Objective Art

What is abstract art?

Abstract art moves away from realistic representation by simplifying, distorting, rearranging, or emphasizing elements such as color, line, shape, and form.

What is non-objective art?

Non-objective art does not depict recognizable objects. The artwork may consist entirely of colors, lines, shapes, and forms.

What is the difference between abstract and non-objective art?

Abstract art can still be based on something recognizable, whereas non-objective art does not need to represent an object at all.

When did abstract art begin?

Modern abstraction developed gradually during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Artists began producing non-representational work around 1910.

Who invented abstract art?

There is no single inventor of abstract art, as several artists moved toward abstraction around the same period. Wassily Kandinsky is one of the artists most frequently associated with the development of abstract painting, but other artists were also independently experimenting with abstract imagery, such as Klee and Mondrian.

Who are famous abstract artists?

Important early abstract artists include:

• Wassily Kandinsky
• Piet Mondrian
• Kazimir Malevich
• Paul Klee
• Robert Delaunay
• Sonia Delaunay

Was Kandinsky the first abstract artist?

Kandinsky is often described as a pioneer of abstract painting, but historians have identified other artists who also created abstract or non-representational works during the same broader period. It is more accurate to describe him as one of the pioneers of modern abstraction.

Was Mondrian always an abstract artist?

No. Mondrian began by painting recognizable landscapes and trees, and his work gradually became increasingly geometric and abstract.

What is Suprematism?

Suprematism was an abstract movement developed by Kazimir Malevich that used simple geometric shapes and emphasized pure artistic feeling rather than recognizable objects.

What is De Stijl?

De Stijl was a Dutch modern art movement associated with artists such as Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.

It emphasized:

• horizontal and vertical lines
• geometric forms
• primary colors
• simplicity
• order

What was the Bauhaus?

The Bauhaus was a German school of art, architecture, craft, and design founded in 1919. It became enormously influential in modern architecture, furniture, typography, graphic design, and art education

Why did artists stop painting recognizable objects?

Artists believed color, line, and shape could communicate without representing objects. They were interested in:

• emotion
• spirituality
• rhythm
• balance
• movement
• pure visual experience

Is all modern art abstract?

No. Many modern artists continued to paint recognizable art subjects. Modern art includes both representational and abstract approaches.

Is Abstract Expressionism the same as abstract art?

No, abstract art is a broad category. Abstract Expressionism is a specific American art movement that emerged in the 1940s.

What abstract artists are best for children to study?

Kandinsky, Mondrian, Paul Klee, Sonia Delaunay, and Robert Delaunay are excellent choices.

Explore Color, Line, and Shape Through Abstract Art

Abstract art offers children a different way to approach a work of art. Instead of immediately asking, “What is it supposed to be?” they can begin by identifying what they actually see: a red circle, three black lines, a yellow rectangle, or a group of blue shapes.

This encourages children to pay attention to the elements artists use to create their work, including line, shape, color, form, space, texture, rhythm, and balance. Abstract art helps them understand that a painting does not always need to represent a recognizable subject to be worth studying.

When looking at abstract and non-objective art, ask, “Where does your eye go first, and where does it move next?” Then ask, “How did the artist use color, line, and shape to guide your attention?”

These questions encourage children to look more closely and think about the artist’s choices rather than dismissing a work with, “I could do that.” They begin to consider why the artist arranged the elements in a particular way and how those decisions affect the finished work.

To learn more, read these books:

Meet Wassily Kandinsky (Meet the Artist)Meet Piet Mondrian (Meet the Artist)Meet Paul Klee (Meet the Artist)Abstract Art (Basic Art)Abstract Art (World of Art)Abstract Art (Art Essentials)The Language of Abstract Art: Learn to See, Compose, and CreateSonia Delaunay: A Life of ColorPaul Klee: Activities for Kids (Meet the Artist Books)Malevich (Basic Art)

 

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