Many art scholars describe Lyrical Abstraction as an art movement, but it was more a specific trend in the 1900s within abstract painting. The term' Lyrical Abstraction' refers to only one of the tendencies or movements within 'Art Informel' of the 1940s and 1950s. All the artist groups who were accommodated under the 'Art Informel' umbrella broke away from established aesthetic traditions.
To understand Lyrical Abstraction better, we'll look at its history and origin and put it in perspective with other art tendencies and groups. We'll also discuss whether there were differences between Lyrical Abstraction in Europe and the United States.
The History Behind Lyrical Abstraction
Lyrical Abstractionism's roots are found at the beginning of the 1900s. In 1910 the Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, created the painting "First Abstract Watercolor." This avant-garde work is seen as the beginning of what has become later known as Abstraction. Wassily Kandinsky is regarded as the father of Abstraction.
Abstraction can be described as the art of not representing things as exact pictures. In other words, an Abstraction artist either abstracts elements from an object creating a more simplified form, or creates a work of art that has no source in actual reality. In the 1900s, the goal of Abstraction artists was to create new forms to express their emotions.
Their point of departure was that because they painted freely with no preconceived ideas of an objective world, they did not know what meaning there might be in their lyrical artworks. They believed that with their technique, they expressed their emotions better, and the viewer of the painting could also - be losing the real context of the work - more easily come into contact with the artist's emotions.
The Abstraction painters' favorite technique was watercolor. Some of them, however, created famous war paintings and large oil paintings filled with passion. Color always predominated over shape, and the artists used different colors to represent different emotions.
Origin
After World War II, Lyrical Abstractionism blossomed in Europe – especially France. The Lyrical Abstractionists in Europe were opposed to the remains of pre-World War II art styles, including movements such as Cubism, Surrealism movement, and, not to forget, the famous geometric art. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lyrica Abstraction also emerged in the US – the so-called American Lyrical Abstraction.
To describe the concept of Lyrical Abstraction in paintings, Kandinsky compared his lyrical artworks to musical compositions, abstractly communicating emotion. His abstract paintings were always imaginative, emotive, expressive, passionate, and subjective - in other words, lyrical. However, the term' Lyrical Abstraction' for paintings was only used for the first time in 1947. It happened at a post-World War II exhibition entitled "L'Imaginaire."
The 1947 exhibition was held at the "Galerie du Luxembourg" in Paris and included lyrical artworks works by Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (Wols) (1913-51), and Hans Hartung (1904-89), to name a few. The term' Lyrical Abstraction' was used by the exhibition co-organizer and lyrical artist Georges Mathieu because of the variety of abstract works with a lyrical nature being displayed.
The exhibition was one of many more to come all over Europe, making Lyrical Abstraction popular.
Similar Sub-groups
In the 1900s, Lyrical Abstraction in Europe was accommodated under the 'Art Informel' umbrella. Numerous sub-styles and sub-groups were accommodated under this umbrella. Apart from Lyrical Abstraction, they included groups such as" Forces Nouvelles," "CoBrA," "Tachisme," "Art Brut," and "Art Non Figuratif."
All these groups and sub-groups have one thing in common – they were abstract or semi-abstract in that they all rejected styles such as Geometric Abstraction, Naturalism, and figurative genres. It is difficult to distinguish painters to belong to only one subgroup because of the many similar characteristics of the sub-groups.
Lyrical Abstraction in Europe
As mentioned above, the Abstraction movement was started by the lyrical artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1910 in Europe, and the trend was named 'Lyrical Abstraction' during an art exhibition entitled "L'Imaginaire" in 1947.
After World War II, many artists were back in Paris, where they worked and exhibited. Most of these artists were Lyrical Abstractionists. They were opposed to the remains of pre-war styles, and in Europe, the Lyrical Abstraction movement was seen as a tool to restore the artistic image of Paris and the rest of Europe.
Many Lyrical Abstraction artists, such as Georges Mathieu, Jean René Bazaine, Camille Bryen, Jean Le Moal, and Gustave Singier, moved back to Paris after the War. To them, Lyrical Abstraction offered the opening to personal expression.
In Belgium, Louis Van Lint moved after a short time from Geometric Abstraction to Lyrical Abstraction, in which he excelled. Exhibitions all over Paris and in other European cities made Lyrical Abstraction popular until 1957, when the New Realism movement began. However, since the 1970s, some European artists have experimented with Lyrical Abstraction again.
Lyrical Abstraction in the United States
During the 1960s and 1970s, American Lyrical Abstraction emerged in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and then later in Toronto and London. Lyrical Abstraction took the visual arts in the US away from Minimalism in painting. Instead, the artists moved toward a new free expressionism. As a result, lyrical Abstraction guided the American art society to a freer sense of art.
Characteristics of the American Lyrical Abstraction included loose paint handling, illusionist space, spontaneous expression, acrylic staining, occasional imagery, and other new technological techniques. In addition, the style of painting was similar to the European Lyric style. By following the American Lyrical Abstraction trend, painters reacted against the Minimalist, Formalist, Pop Art, and Geometric Abstraction styles of the 1960s.
In spirit, American Lyrical Abstractionism is related to Color Field painting, Abstract Expressionism, and the European Tachisme of the 1940s and 1950s. Various exhibitions of works by American Lyrical Abstraction artists have been held since the late 1900s.
Painters exhibiting include artists such as John Seery and Thornton Willis. They experimented with very free and loose painting styles.
In 1971 "Lyrical Abstraction" was an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 1993, the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska, held an exhibition entitled "Lyrical Abstraction: Color and Mood." Participants included artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Walter Darby Bannard, Peter Young, Dan Christensen, and many other Lyrical Abstractionists.
In 2009 the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida hosted an exhibition of Lyric Abstraction works. The exhibition was entitled "Expanding Boundaries: Lyrical Abstraction Selections from the Permanent Collection."
Interestingly, modern artists and fashion designers are still influenced by the free expression of the Lyrical Abstraction movement. Vivienne Westwood, for example, is famous for her colorful and abstract prints.
Notable Artists and Paintings
Many post-World War II painters were active Lyrical Abstractionists. For your convenience, we list some artists and mention some of their paintings for life.
European
The following artists were notable European artists of lyrical Abstractionism:
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866 –1944) was a Russian art theorist and painter. Kandinsky is generally regarded as the father of Abstraction. He was born in Moscow, spent his childhood in Odessa, and graduated from Grekov Odessa Art School. After studying law and economics at the University of Moscow, he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat.
As the visual arts had always been his hobby, he began with painting studies when he was 30 years old. In 1896, he settled in Munich; however, he had to return to Moscow after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Kandinsky later helped to establish the "Museum of the Culture of Painting."
In 1920 he returned to Germany and later to France, where he created some of his most important works of art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. His painting, "Untitled" ("First Abstract Watercolor"), is a Modernist ink and watercolor drawing. He created it in 1910, and it has become the painting that is generally regarded as the beginning of Abstraction in Western art.
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Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (Wols) (1913-1951)
Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze used the pseudonym "Wols.". He was a German painter but was mainly active in France. He was unrecognized in his lifetime but is nowadays considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction and an influential artist of the Tachisme movement.
Alfred Schulze was born in Berlin in 1913, but the family moved to Dresden, where, in 1927, he found his love for art. In 1932 he moved to Paris. The artist had to intern at the outbreak of World War II as he a German national. Fortunately, he escaped hiding in Cassis near Marseilles. During that time, he tried to immigrate to the United States but was unsuccessful.
After the War, he returned to Paris and organised his very first exhibition of watercolors in December 1945. His Lyrical Abstraction paintings are characterized by his rejection of figuration and other forms of abstraction. Two of his famous paintings are "It's All Over the City" (1947) and "Yellow Composition" (1946–7).
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Paul Klee (1879–1940)
Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist. He was born in Switzerland as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee. At 7, he started receiving violin classes and was a very successful violin player.
In his early years, Klee focused on becoming a musician, but as a teenager, he decided to concentrate on the visual arts and studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After he had received his Fine Arts degree, Klee traveled to Italy and visited Rome, Florence, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast. Later he married and lived in Munich.
His first solo exhibition was held in 1910 in Bern. The same exhibition then traveled to three Swiss cities. He also became acquainted with Wassily Kandinsky and formed part of the group later known as Abstractionists.
In 1914 Klee created his first pure abstract color paintings, "In the Style of Kairouan." It was composed of colored rectangles and a few circles. The colored rectangle became the basic building block in his later works. Some art scholars associate this rectangle with a musical note.
United States
Helen Frankenthaler was one of the best examples of American Lyrical Abstractionists. Although Jean-Paul Riopelle was not from the United States but from Canada, he is also included in the list of artists from the United States. This is because he was still an Abstractionist from Northern America.
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Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011)
Helen Frankenthaler was a well-known American abstract expressionist artist. She spanned several generations of abstract painters and exhibited her work for over six decades – from the early 1950s until 2011. Her paintings have also been used for several retrospective exhibitions.
"Mountains and Sea" was her first professionally exhibited work. Although it does not directly depict the Nova Scotia coastline, the abstract work suggests a kind of seascape or landscape. It also seems as if Frankenthaler's "Basque Landscape" (1958) refers to an external environment; it is, just like "Mountains and Sea," abstract.
Her "Eden" (1956) depicts the images of the artist's imagination. In other words, it is an interior landscape telling the story of an abstract, interior world.
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Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923 – 2002),
Jean-Paul Riopelle was a Canadian painter and sculptor. He is globally known for his abstract painting style, specifically his "mosaic" works of the 1950s. In the 1950's he abandoned the paintbrush and started using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas. He began drawing lessons in 1933.
While in 1942, he enrolled at the "École des beaux-arts de Montréal," and moved his studies to the less academic "École du meuble," where he graduated in 1945. Riopelle's style in the 1940s changed from Surrealism to Lyrical Abstraction. He used cubes and triangles of multicolored elements and applied paint to the canvass with a knife.
Riopelle was undoubtedly one of the most important Canadian artists of the 20th century, establishing his reputation in the postwar art scene of Paris. One of his famous artworks is his 1992 "Homage Ă Rosa Luxemburg." This painting is regarded as a high point of his later work.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that Lyrical Abstraction paintings played an important role in the post-World War II art scene by opening up the possibility for painters to share emotion effectively.
This was possible because of Lyrical Abstraction paintings in the 1900s that contained emotional content, had something important to communicate, often had an undercurrent of spiritual orientation, and represented aesthetic elements of composition, color, and design.