Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925

By Leah Dickerman

"Dickerman urges against defining abstraction in terms of forward progress...less interested in the invention of abstraction than abstraction as invention. The main impact of this horizontalist approach is geographic, bringing peripheral sites into focus without denying the importance of major hubs." —Daniel Marcus, Art in America

"Featuring twenty-four contributors, this MoMA catalogue explores the evolution of early modernist abstraction across various mediums, countries and movements." —Arne Glimcher, Art in America

In 1912, in several European cities, a handful of artists—Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Robert Delaunay—presented the first abstract pictures to the public. Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925 celebrates the centennial of this bold new type of artwork, tracing the development of abstraction as it moved through a network of modern artists, from Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp to Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, sweeping across nations and across media. The exhibition brings together many of the most influential works in abstraction’s early history and covers a wide range of artistic production, including paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, films, photographs, sound poems, atonal music, and non-narrative dance, to draw a cross-media portrait of these watershed years.

This richly illustrated publication covers a wide range of artistic production—including paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, film, photography, sound poetry, atonal music, and non-narrative dance—to draw a cross-media portrait of these watershed years. An introductory essay by Leah Dickerman, Curator in the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, is followed by focused studies of key groups of works, events, and critical issues in abstraction’s early history by renowned scholars from a variety of fields.

Hardcover
376 pages
MoMA, 2013
12 x 9.5 x 1 inches
ISBN 9780870708282
Exhibition Catalogue, Art History, Abstraction, Essays