Abstract art broke away from realistic depiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pioneers like Kandinsky, Malevich and Picasso rejected academic rules to explore pure color, shape, line and gesture. Over time, many distinct styles emerged, each with its own history, methods and look. Below are 14 key styles, explained simply for a total beginner.
1. Geometric Abstraction
Characteristics:
Geometric Abstraction originated in Russia and the Netherlands around 1915 to 1920, driven by Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. It uses only basic shapes such as squares, circles and triangles arranged to look perfectly balanced and harmonious. Nothing feels accidental; every form is placed with intention, edges are razor-sharp and colors are flat and unblended. The effect is calm, minimal and almost mathematical, as if the painting were a diagram of harmony rather than an imitation of real life.
Technique:
Rulers, compasses and straight-edge tools create exact, measured shapes on canvas.
Artist & Example:
Kazimir Malevich – Black Square (1915)
How to recognize effectively:
Spot flawless geometric forms in strict grids or balanced layouts, with no visible brushwork or texture.
2. Lyrical Abstraction
Image courtesy: www.wassilykandinsky.net
Characteristics:
Lyrical Abstraction emerged in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s. It builds on Kandinsky’s early experiments and uses soft, flowing curves instead of straight lines or rigid forms. Colors blend into one another, creating a sense of continuous movement and emotion.
The artist’s brushwork is loose and spontaneous, so each painting feels like a visual improvisation of feeling rather than a planned diagram.
Technique:
Loose, sweeping brushstrokes and wet-on-wet blending let colors merge directly on the canvas.
Artist & Example:
Wassily Kandinsky – Composition VII (1913)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for overlapping, fluid shapes and gently mixed hues that suggest motion and mood.
3. Tachisme
Image courtesy: www.artchive.com
Characteristics:
Tachisme, from post-war France in the late 1940s, emphasizes paint as stain and texture. It embraces blotches, smears, drips and random marks. There is no pre-planned design; each mark records a spontaneous gesture.
The look is raw and visceral, revealing the artist’s immediate impulse and rejecting any need for harmony or symmetry.
Technique:
Paint is applied in random patches, dribbles or thick smears using palette knives, brushes or even hands.
Artist & Example:
Jean Dubuffet – The Cow with the Subtle Nose (1954)
How to recognize effectively:
Notice irregular stains, drips and built-up textures that feel unrefined and expressive.
4. Action Painting
Image courtesy: www.jackson-pollock.org
Characteristics:
Action Painting, named in New York around 1950, turns the canvas into a stage for movement. Jackson Pollock pioneered in this abstract art style by laying his canvas flat and flinging paint in sweeping arcs and drips.
The resulting work records the artist’s bodily motions; every splash, drip and swirl marks a step in the creative performance. There is no central focus; the entire surface is energized and appears alive.
Technique:
Paint is dripped, flung or poured onto a horizontal canvas, often with sticks, brushes or direct squeeze bottles.
Artist & Example:
Jackson Pollock – Number 1, 1949
How to recognize effectively:
Look for continuous splatters and trajectories of paint that cover the whole canvas in energetic layers.
5. Color Field Painting
Image courtesy: www.mark-rothko.org
Characteristics:
Color Field Painting arose in the early 1950s as a calmer counterpoint to Action Painting. Artists like Mark Rothko spread large, softly edged areas of single colors across the canvas. There are no shapes or lines to distract the viewer, just immersive fields of hue meant to evoke deep emotion and quiet contemplation. The result feels like stepping into a sea of color.
Technique:
Thin washes or stains of paint are applied in wide, sweeping strokes to create seamless, glowing expanses.
Artist & Example:
Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue) (1953)
How to recognize effectively:
Notice vast, blurred rectangles or bands of color that hover and invite meditative viewing.
6. Minimalism
Image courtesy: www.sothebys.com
Characteristics:
Minimalism emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to emotional, gestural abstraction. It reduces art to its barest essentials: simple geometric forms, limited palette and generous empty space. Personal expression is stripped away in favor of clarity and objectivity.
The result feels calm, ordered and almost architectural, drawing attention to the viewer’s experience of space and form.
Technique:
Precisely fabricated shapes, often metal or plywood, are repeated or isolated against plain backgrounds.
Artist & Example:
Nasreen Mohamedi – Untitled (1969)
How to recognize effectively:
Spot unadorned, repeated or singular forms in neutral tones surrounded by ample negative space.
7. Cubism
Image courtesy: www.pablopicasso.org
Characteristics:
Cubism began in Paris around 1907 with Picasso and Braque. It shattered the rules of perspective by breaking objects into overlapping geometric planes. Rather than showing a single viewpoint, it displays many at once, like a puzzle reassembled.
Early works use muted earth tones to focus on form; later, bright colors and collage elements appear. Cubism revolutionized Western art and opened the door to full abstraction.
Technique:
Angular facets and overlapping planes are painted or collaged, often in subdued palettes.
Artist & Example:
Pablo Picasso – Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for jagged, interlocking shapes that hint at real objects such as faces, bottles or instruments from multiple angles.
8. Suprematism
Characteristics:
Suprematism, launched by Malevich in Russia in 1915, seeks to express pure feeling through geometry. It uses only the simplest shapes: squares, circles, crosses, on empty backgrounds.
This radical reduction rejects all figurative reference in favor of spiritual or emotional universality. The resulting space is contemplative and symbolic, with shape and color alone conveying meaning.
Technique:
Flat, isolated geometric forms are painted on blank or lightly tinted fields.
Artist & Example:
Kazimir Malevich – White on White (1918)
How to recognize effectively:
Spot lone geometric figures floating on a vast, uncluttered background as pure abstract symbolism.
9. Orphism
Image courtesy: en.wikipedia.org
Characteristics:
Orphism, named by poet Apollinaire in 1912, built on Cubism’s geometric approach but replaced muted tones with vibrant color and circular forms.
Robert Delaunay and others used concentric rings and prismatic hues to evoke light, rhythm and modern dynamism. The effect is joyful and kaleidoscopic and it prefigured later optical and kinetic experiments.
Technique:
Overlapping arcs, circles and rings are painted in vivid, contrasting colors to create optical vibration.
Artist & Example:
Robert Delaunay – Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon (1913)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for bright, spinning circular motifs that seem to pulsate with energy and light.
10. Pixelation Abstraction
Image courtesy: www.wikiart.org
Characteristics:
Pixelation Abstraction emerged in the late 20th century alongside the rise of digital imaging. Artists sought to highlight the basic building blocks of digital pictures—pixels—as an aesthetic choice rather than a technical limitation. Works in this style break images into visible square units, often enlarging them so that individual pixels become clearly defined.
The effect draws attention to the process of image making and to the tension between clarity and fragmentation. Early adopters included digital and mixed-media artists experimenting with computer graphics.
Over time, painters and printmakers adopted the grid of colored squares to explore themes of perception and memory. Today, Pixelation Abstraction spans traditional canvas, digital prints and installations that reference screens and low-resolution imagery.
Technique:
Images are divided into a grid of uniform squares, each filled with a single color or tone; artists may paint, print or display these grids digitally.
Artist & Example:
Chuck Close – Mark (1978)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for compositions built from regular square units of color that combine to form a larger image only when viewed from a distance.
11. Marbling (Suminagashi)
Image courtesy: en.wikipedia.org
Characteristics:
Marbling, known as Suminagashi or “ink floating,” dates back to 12th-century Japan. Artists drop water-based inks onto a shallow tray of water and gently manipulate the surface so the colors form swirling, cloud-like patterns.
Each design is unique because it depends on subtle currents and the interaction of inks on water. Marbling was originally used to decorate paper for books and documents. In the mid-20th century, Western abstract artists revived the technique with acrylics and other pigments.
Unlike painted patterns, marbled sheets capture fluid movement and organic veining that cannot be reproduced exactly.
Technique:
Colored inks or very thin paints are floated on water, swirled with tools or breath, and then transferred to paper or fabric by laying it on the surface.
Artist & Example:
Contemporary practitioners such as Toshikata Saitō produce marbled papers used in bookbinding and fine art printmaking.
How to recognize effectively:
Look for seamless, fluid swirls of color with lace-like veins and no two areas exactly alike.
12. Biomorphic Abstraction
Image courtesy: www.joan-miro.net
Characteristics:
Biomorphic Abstraction emerged in the 1920s and 1930s with artists like Joan Miró and Jean Arp. It draws on shapes found in nature such as cells, leaves, and shells but simplifies them into soft, flowing forms.
These organic silhouettes feel alive and playful, suggesting movement and growth without literal depiction. The style bridges abstraction and surrealism, offering a dream-like natural world.
Technique:
Freehand curves and rounded shapes are painted or sculpted to evoke living forms.
Artist & Example:
Joan Miró – The Harlequin’s Carnival (1924)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for amoeba-like shapes and flowing lines that evoke biological or undersea life.
13. Futurism
Image courtesy: www.britannica.com
Characteristics:
Futurism began in Italy in 1909 under Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s manifesto. It celebrates speed, technology and urban energy. Painters like Giacomo Balla captured movement by repeating and blurring forms such as vehicles and human figures across the canvas.
Compositions are dominated by diagonals and dynamic lines, reflecting a belief in progress and mechanization. Futurism influenced design, film and graphic arts, embodying the exhilaration of modern life.
Technique:
Overlapping streaked forms and bold diagonal strokes create the illusion of rapid motion.
Artist & Example:
Giacomo Balla – Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912)
How to recognize effectively:
Spot blurred, repeated shapes and diagonal lines that convey speed and energy.
14. Collage-Based Abstraction
Image courtesy: www.pablopicasso.org
Characteristics:
Collage-Based Abstraction emerged in the early 20th century alongside Cubism, when artists such as Picasso and Braque began incorporating newspaper clippings, sheet music and fabric into their canvases. Instead of relying on paint alone, this style combines multiple materials such as paper, photographs and textiles affixed to a surface.
The layered composition places real-world fragments next to painted areas, creating a dialogue between representation and pure abstraction. Dada and Surrealist artists later expanded the approach by adding found objects and ready-made elements.
By the 1950s and 1960s, Abstract Expressionists and Pop artists used collage techniques to blur the lines between high art and everyday imagery. Today, it remains a versatile method for juxtaposing textures, text and color in non-narrative compositions.
Technique:
Materials such as paper, photographs, fabrics or other found objects are cut or torn and adhered to a support, often combined with paint, drawing or printmaking.
Artist & Example:
Pablo Picasso – Still Life with Chair Caning (1912)
How to recognize effectively:
Look for visible edges of paper or fabric layered onto the painted surface, unexpected textures or text fragments integrated into an otherwise abstract design.
