Objective abstraction
Description
Objective abstraction was a British art group or movement c. 1933–1936, taking its name from the "Objective Abstractions" exhibition of 1934. It is a misnomer in the sense that a minority of the artists in the exhibition were at that time engaged in abstract painting. The grouping was short-lived, lasting only a few years, with a number of the artists involved later taking part in the Euston Road School of realism.
Objective abstraction was a form of abstract art developed by a group of British artists in 1933. Experimentation was prevalent in British art at the time. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Graham Bell
South African-born British painter and theorist who co-founded the short-lived Objective abstraction group before later shifting to social realism as a founder of the Euston Road School.
William Coldstream
Core figure in early 1930s British experimental painting who participated in the Objective abstraction movement before rejecting non-representational art to establish the Euston Road School.
Rodrigo Moynihan
The central innovator of Objective abstraction who created radical, non-geometric canvases composed of free, improvisatory brushstrokes inspired by late Turner and Monet.
Geoffrey Tibble
Pioneering artist who originated the improvisatory Objective abstraction brushstroke style in late 1933, creating completely non-figurative works of pure painterly gesture.
Edgar Hubert
Dedicated abstract painter who adopted Tibble and Moynihan's gestural technique in 1934 and remained loyal to organic abstraction long after his peers returned to realism.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
The name 'Objective abstraction' is historically ironic and paradoxical; when the group held their landmark 1934 exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery in London, several participating artists were already abandoning abstraction to return to external observation, and within two years Bell, Coldstream, and Moynihan founded the realist Euston Road School.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk
By creating paintings entirely through improvised, freely applied brushstrokes inspired by J.M.W. Turner without geometric planning, the Objective abstractionists invented a radical form of lyrical gestural abstraction in London more than a decade before American Abstract Expressionism or French Tachisme emerged after World War II.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk