WHAT IS ORGANIC ABSTRACTION? - ART - 2024

The organic abstraction is a subtendencia of abstraction opposed to figurative art was the big trend in the middle of the twentieth century. It was characterized by its schematization of forms without resorting to the object, replacing it with undefined and / or ambiguous forms.

Some of these sub-trends of abstraction were geometric abstraction originated in Paris in 1912 by an exhibition of Cubists; the inorganic abstraction or Informalism and the organic abstraction that derived from the forms present in nature, abstracting and synthesizing them.

Concepts about organic abstraction

It is also known as biomorphic abstraction, since its main characteristic is that it takes natural forms to translate them into art.

"Abstract" literally means "non-figurative." It involves decomposing the specific images and replacing them with the meanings that the author himself gives them.

"Organic" refers to representations similar to those found in nature, such as curved shapes, rounded figures, or smoothed geometric figures, with few straight lines or abrupt angles.

Organic abstraction was closely related to the surrealist and existentialist currents and was manifested in all artistic expressions of the 20th century.

Although it had its peak between the 1940s and 1950s, there are manifestations of this style since the beginning of the century, also extending until the 1960s and 70s.

The characteristics of organic abstractionism, such as the presence of smooth and undulating lines, the prominence of nature, irregular shapes and free strokes, are transferable principles, as in fact they were transferred, to any other artistic manifestation of the time, such as literature. and the theater.

Organic abstraction had in Joan Miró, Jean Arp, Isamu Nuguchi, Henry Moore and others, its most relevant exponents, both in painting and sculpture, with abundant works in irregular volumes and curves.

In architecture, this artistic expression began to develop in the first half of the 20th century. Organic architecture seeks and expresses the harmony between man and his natural environment; seeks to integrate the place with the buildings, the furniture and what surrounds it to turn everything into a single unit.

The concept of organicity as an imitation of nature has been present since prehistoric times; However, the expression “organic architecture” to define buildings was used for the first time by the American architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), and later taken up and promoted by his fellow countryman and pupil, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

Main exponents of organic abstraction

Joan Miró (1893-1983)

He was a Catalan plastic artist who absorbed the entire abstractionist movement when he lived in New York in the 1940s. His constant characteristic was to flee from academicism and from being pigeonholed into a specific current.

In all his pictorial work the organic feeling beats strongly. Most of his works were made on paper and ceramics, as well as bronze engravings and sculptures, among which stand out "Woman and Bird", "Lunar Bird" located in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and "Bottle Woman" located in the Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Henry Moore (1898-1986)

He was an English sculptor famous for his abstract works of the human figure made in marble and bronze.

Those that recreate the figure of the female body stand out, such as “West Wind” (1929), sculpted in Portland stone -inspired by the figure of the Chac Mool in Chichén Itzá and the sculptures of Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel- and the bronze sculpture "Die Liegende" located in a public space in Stuttgart, Germany.

Jean Arp (1886-1975)

He combines automatism and dream techniques in the same work, developing an iconography of organic forms that has come to be called "biomorphic sculpture", in which he tries to represent the organic as a formative principle of reality.

One of his most beautiful sculptures is "Pastor de Nubes" and it is exhibited in the open spaces of the University City of Caracas, Venezuela.

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988)

He was a Japanese-American sculptor and designer. One of his works, made of stainless steel, won the national competition to decorate the Associated Press pavilion at New York's Rockefeller Center in 1938.

Later he made works for the open air, designed according to the aesthetic principles of Japanese gardens, where the location of each piece plays a decisive role in achieving the integral balance of the landscape.

For Noguchi, trees were very important in his work and in his life, to the point that in his studio and where at the end of his years he installed his museum, the layout of the building was determined by the location of the pre-existing trees.

Juan Soriano (1920-2006)

He was a Mexican plastic artist whose talent became known from an early age. In the 1950s he traveled to Europe, where his lyrical style was consolidated.

Among his most important pictorial works are "María Asúnsolo en Rosa" and "Apolo y las musas", and on the sculptural plane, bird figures such as "La Paloma" (in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico), " Duck ”and“ Two-faced bird ”.

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

She was a British plastic artist who was very influenced by the work of Henry Moore; She worked with traditional materials in an innovative way, giving special importance to their natural properties.

It was characterized by its stone and wood sculptures with holes or holes, such as "Sphere with inner form" and "Winged Figure".

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

He was a civil engineer who began as a draftsman in the studio of Louis Henri Sullivan, who had a decisive influence on his future career.

He was the one who introduced the term organic architecture, where construction must derive directly from the natural environment. Some of his emblematic works are the Guggenheim Museum in New York (USA) and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (Japan).

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)

He was a Romanian sculptor considered a pioneer of modernism. He has works distributed in museums in France, the United States, Romania and Australia.

One of his emblematic organic works is "The Column of Infinity", in Targu Jiu, Romania, as well as "The Kiss" and the "Sleeping Muse".

References

1. Carmen Rábanos (2010). Current Art. University Presses of Zaragoza. Zaragoza, Spain.
2. Mayra Sámano Cienfuegos (2010). Influence of Organic Architecture on the architectural styles of the second half of the 20th century. Postgraduate thesis at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, Mexico.
3. Alicia Carrera Tovar (2012). Visual Arts 3. Ediciones Castillo. P.19.
4. Biography of Isamu Noguchi. Recovered from biografiasyvidas.com.
5. Biography of Joan Miró. Recovered from fmirobcn.org.
6. Eva Font Mendiola (2017). The most unknown museum in NY. Press article recovered from turismo.perfil.com.
7. Biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Recovered from Buscabiografias.com.