Room 505

 Circa 1913

Between 1911 and 1914 , a new generation of artists made a radical shift toward abstraction. Rather than depict objects in the world, they experimented with interactions between forms and colors. ' These colored planes are the structure of the picture'. said artist Robert Delaunay, 'and nature is no longer a subject for description but a pretext.'

The trailblazers of Abstraction hailed from a number of European cities, but many of them flocked to Paris, the burgeoning center of the art world. Some used shifting, kaleidoscopic forms to create the dynamism of modern, mechanised life. Others, reacting warily to the effects of industrialization, turned inward to explore the spiritual dimensions of pure color.  As painter Frantisek Kupka remarked: 'The creative ability of an artist is manifested only if he succeeds in transporting the natural phenomena into 'another reality'.

The Entrance

'Mde. Kupka among Verticals', Frantisek Kupka, 1911.  Male painters and their wives' portraits have been psychologically very interesting.  Does anyone else feel she is being suffocated.  

Hilma of Klint, 'The Dove No. 2', 1915

  

Fernand Leger, 'Exit the Ballet Russes', 1914

Georgia O'Keeffe, 'Lake George, Coat and Red', 1919

Stanton Macdonald Wright, 'Synchromy', 1917

'Dynamism of a Soccer Player', Umberto Boccioni, 1913

Robert Delaunay, 'Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon', 1913

Umberto Boccioni, 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space', 1913

Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 'The Horse', 1914

Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine, 'Symphony Number l', 1913

Marc Chagall, 'I and the Village', 1911

Kazimir Malevich, 'Woman with Pails', 1912

 Pablo Picasso, 'Glass of Absinthe' 1914

Diego Rivera, 'Cubist Landscape', 1912

Juan Gris, 'Grapes', 1913

Natalia Goncharova, 'The Forest', 1913

Sonia Delaunay-Turk, ' Portuguese Market', 1915

Liubov Popova, 'Objects from a Dyer's Shop', 1914 

To rest in the Garden: