With bright spreads of color and with sharp geometrics, he lured the art world to abstraction. What was his painting that defined a movement, and why was it titled in German?

looney_tunes

I really want the answer to this question to be the painting by Georges Braque that was described by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1908 as 'full of little cubes'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism But I can find no evidence that any painting in that exhibition had a German title, and Braque's work tended to be rather dull in color. Still searching for a better solution. Nov 02 09, 1:08 AM

queproblema

I prefer Braque's work to the one I have in mind. But that's merely personal taste. To help in your search, he was neither a Cubist nor French. And I should have said, "First with bright spreads of color and later with sharp geometrics,..." I don't know if anybody else ever called them "sharp geometrics"; that's my term. Nov 02 09, 1:48 AM

purrrr

Dutch artist Piet Mondrian had "sharp geometrics" and founded the "Stijl" group of artists, and a magazine called Di Stijl. But I couldn't find a painting by that name, just the movement. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Piet_Mondrian.aspx Nov 02 09, 2:00 AM

queproblema

Mondrian's colors and geometrics were in the same works. This man's early ones were recognizable scenes painted brightly; later he developed a different style. Not Picasso, not Spanish, not Dutch. And I'm getting on my horse and trotting off to bed! Nov 02 09, 2:18 AM

serpa

This is a guess on my part. De Stijl (Dutch pronunciation: [də ˈstɛɪl], English: /də ˈstaɪl/), Dutch for "The Style", also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands.[1][2] De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), propagating the group's theories. ... They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. Arithmetische Komposition is a 1924 painting by Theo van Doesburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl I paint modern is an anagram of Piet Mondrian! Nov 02 09, 2:18 AM

queproblema

Another hint before I go galloping off-- Picasso did have a period that offers a clue. Nov 02 09, 2:24 AM

serpa

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. Der Blaue Reiter was a German movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgement from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked a central artistic manifesto, but was centred around Kandinsky and Marc. Paul Klee was also involved. The name of the movement comes from a painting by Kandinsky created in 1903. It is also claimed that the name could have derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Blaue_Reiter Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter, and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. ... From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe, (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow) until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. ...In Paris he was quite isolated since abstract painting—particularly geometric abstract painting—was not recognized, the artistic fashions being mainly Impressionism and cubism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky Nov 02 09, 3:00 AM

queproblema

Yes! The blue rider on a white horse galloping across a green meadow with purple trees and orange buildings in the background. Might sound garish, but it isn't. This page shows the progression of his work. Contrary to what I may have implied in my haste, he did not abandon color as he developed his more geometric shapes; his works from the 30s combine bright colors with geometric abstractions. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/ The Guggenheim is currently presenting a retrospective. Here's the official site, with a tour: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/kandinsky Nov 02 09, 7:13 PM