Primary Abstraction

About

Primary abstraction strips a picture or object down to basics: a square, a line, a band of pure colour, a single light. The aim is not to simplify something seen but to present form and colour as subjects in themselves.

Kazimir Malevich's Black Square, shown in Petrograd in 1915, is a starting point, followed by Lyubov Popova's overlapping planes and Piet Mondrian's red, yellow and blue compositions of the 1920s. After 1945 Barnett Newman divided vast colour fields with narrow vertical 'zips', Ellsworth Kelly painted single-colour shaped panels, and Carmen Herrera reduced compositions to two colours and a crisp edge. Dan Flavin's fluorescent tubes of the 1960s made standard light fittings do the same work. Lee Ufan, working between Japan and Korea, repeated single graded brushstrokes in the 1970s, a related reduction with different roots. Look for few elements, flat colour and no hint of illusion.