The debate over who invented abstraction, from Kandinsky to Af Klint — For decades, it was thought that the first artist to take the momentous step of painting entirely abstract art was Wassily Kandinsky in 1911. What the historians didn’t consider was that there was someone else entirely removed from mainstream artistic circles at the time who had beaten Kandinsky to it…

The meaning behind the Dutch masterpiece — There exist only 36 paintings known to be by the hand of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. Thanks to their scarcity, his works are considered to be some of the most expensive objects in art. Not least this painting, titled The Concert, which has a value today estimated to be in…

Women painters who broke barriers — There are countless female artists throughout history who have had significant roles in shaping the world of art. Yet their valuable contributions have historically been undervalued. Factors such as social expectations, traditional gender roles and poor access to education and training academies, prevented women from receiving the same patronage and…

How letting go can fuel your artistic creativity — One way you can think about creativity is that it’s not about what you make, but what you choose to get rid of that matters. For writers, it’s the words, sentences and paragraphs that might be clogging up the flow of a larger piece that sometimes ought to be trimmed…

Robert & Sonia Delaunay’s vibrant vision of modern Life — The Eiffel Tower was unveiled in Paris as the focal point of the World’s Fair of 1889. It was the tallest manmade structure the world had ever seen, originally painted in reddish brown. In 1911, Robert Delauney painted The Red Tower — a Cubist representation in which the blazing red…

Alternative realities and symbolism through paintings — Artists have long been fascinated by mirrors. In art, the reflection in a mirror becomes a portal into an “anti-world” — a more truthful version of our own. Hence, the symbolic use of mirrors in art has often been to expand the limits of the subject matter, to reveal something…

Intimate depictions, romantic connotations —

The artist who rivalled Picasso — The Spanish artist Juan Gris was an innovator, combining the austere, monochromatic style of early Cubism with the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau. The result is an incandescent and distinctive body of work, one that probes the fabric of visible experience and reflects the intricacies and nuances of the modern…

Making vibrations in the soul — The artist Wassily Kandinsky was obsessed with colour. He ardently believed that through his colour-drenched abstract paintings, everyday reality could be transcended, giving access to a higher, immaterial order of experience. In 1896, he relocated from his native Moscow to the city of Munich — a vibrant hub of artistic…