About the lecture by Arjen van Prooijen on May 9, 2025.

“the origin of abstract art”

When I studied art history in the 1980s, it was explained to me that the first abstract work of art was a watercolor painted in 1910 by Wassily Kandinsky.

This story has been revised many times since then. New insights indicate that there were many more artists who thought about abstraction around that time. Not only male artists, but also many women, appear to be great innovators in art history.

Interestingly, the motivation to arrive at abstraction differed per artist.

In this lecture you will hear various hypotheses about the origin of abstract painting. We will look at many examples from a range of artists who all innovated art in their own way at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The lecture is in-depth on the subject but is certainly also easy to follow for people without much prior knowledge.