Editing Abstract art (section)

=== Late 20th century ===
{{Main|Modernism|Late modernism|American Modernism|Surrealism|British Constructivists|Systems Group|Groupe Espace|Abstraction-Création|}}

[[File:Piet Mondriaan, 1939-1942 - Composition 10.jpg|thumb|left|A 1939–1942 oil on canvas painting by [[Piet Mondrian]] titled ''Composition No. 10''. Responding to it, fellow [[De Stijl]] artist [[Theo van Doesburg]] suggested a link between non-representational works of art and ideals of peace and spirituality.<ref>Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond; Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori, Maria Mileeva; BRILL, Oct 24, 2013 "Van Doesburg stated that the purpose of art was to imbue man with those positive spiritual qualities that were needed in order to overcome the dominance of the physical and create the conditions for putting an end to wars. In an enthusiastic essay on Wassily Kandinsky he had written about the dialogue between the artist and the viewer, and the role of art as 'the educator of our inner life, the educator of our hearts and minds'. Van Doesburg subsequently adopted the view that the spiritual in man is nurtured specifically by abstract art, which he later described as 'pure thought, which does not signify a concept derived from natural phenomena but which is contained in numbers, measures, relationships, and abstract lines'. In his response to Piet Mondrian's ''Composition 10'', Van Doesburg linked peace and the spiritual to a non-representational work of art, asserting that 'it produces a most spiritual impression...the impression of repose: the repose of the soul'."</ref>]]

During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction, [[surrealism]], and [[dada]] were represented in New York: [[Marcel Duchamp]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Piet Mondrian]], [[Jacques Lipchitz]], [[André Masson]], [[Max Ernst]], and [[André Breton]], were just a few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.<ref>Gillian Naylor, ''The Bauhaus'', Studio Vista, 1968</ref> The rich cultural influences brought by the European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting ''Composition No. 10'', 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art in general.
Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as [[Georgia O'Keeffe]] who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not joining any specific group of the period.

Eventually American artists who were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups. The best-known group of American artists became known as the [[Abstract expressionists]] and the [[New York School (art)|New York School]]. In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged discussion and there was a new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers [[John D. Graham]] and [[Hans Hofmann]] became important bridge figures between the newly arrived European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. [[Mark Rothko]], born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color compositions of the early 1950s. The [[action painting|expressionistic gesture]] and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to [[Jackson Pollock]], [[Robert Motherwell]], and [[Franz Kline]]. While during the 1940s [[Arshile Gorky]]'s and [[Willem de Kooning]]'s figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it; from other places in America as well.<ref>[[Henry Geldzahler]], ''New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970'', Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 1969</ref>