Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art are all closely related terms. They have similar, but perhaps not identical, meanings.
De Stijl was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden, Voorburg and Laren.
Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He married three times.
Neoplasticism, originating from the Dutch Nieuwe Beelding, is an avant-garde art theory proposed by Piet Mondrian in 1917 and initially employed by the De Stijl art movement. The most notable proponents of this theory were Mondrian and another Dutch artist, Theo van Doesburg. Neoplasticism advocated for a purified abstract art, by applying a set of elementary art principles. Thus, a painting that adhered to neoplastic art theory would typically consist of a balanced composition of simple geometric shapes, right-angled relationships and primary colors.
Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first major abstract works in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian. She belonged to a group called "The Five", comprising a circle of women inspired by Theosophy, who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the so-called "High Masters"—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian, was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He was one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements.
Gerard Caris was a Dutch sculptor and artist who pursued a single motif throughout the course of his artistic career, the pentagon.
Herman Frederik Bieling was a Dutch painter, sculptor, graphic artist and Modern Art propagandist.
August Allebé was an artist and teacher from the Northern Netherlands. His early paintings were in a romantic style, but in his later work he was an exponent of realism and impressionism. He was a major initiator and promoter of Amsterdam Impressionism, the artist's association St. Lucas, and the movement of the Amsterdamse Joffers. Amsterdam Impressionism – sometimes referred to by art historians as the School of Allebé – was the counterflow to the very strong Hague School in the movement of Dutch Impressionism. As a professor at the Royal Academy of Amsterdam he fostered a cosmopolitan attitude toward art and the promotion and motivation of his students, and provided a significant stimulus to developments in modern art.
Berend Strik is a Dutch visual artist working and living in Amsterdam.
Daniël (Daan) van Golden was a Dutch artist, who has been active as a painter, photographer, collagist, installation artist, wall painter and graphic artist. He is known for his meticulous paintings of motives and details of everyday life and every day images.
Edgar Richard Johannes Fernhout was a Dutch painter.
Anna Maria Augusta Cassel was a Swedish artist. She mainly painted landscapes from Norrland, Skåne, Västmanland and around Stockholm, made in oil or in tempera.
Sigrid Elisabeth Hedman, maiden name Norman, was one of the members of the group De Fem, a spiritualist group founded in 1896 and dissolved in 1907.
Georg Ljungström (1861–1930) was a Swedish cartographer, author, and poet.
Emma 'Mathilda' Nilsson, née Cederberg was a Swedish spiritualist from Stockholm.
Modern Theosophy has had considerable influence on the work of visual artists, particularly painters. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Luigi Russolo chose Theosophy as the main ideological and philosophical basis of their work.
Agatha Wilhelmina Zethraeus (1872–1966) was a Dutch artist.
The Red Cloud is a 1907 early painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. It was painted in 1907. Mondrian completed the painting while staying near Oele, in the east of the Netherlands. One art historian has noted that the "hard colour contrasts and charged, expressive brushwork" is part of Mondrian's evolution towards an abstract painter.
