“The new plastic idea cannot, therefore, take the form of a natural or concrete representation, although the latter does always indicate the universal to a degree, or at least conceals it within.”

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

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Piet Mondrian95

Peintre Néerlandais 1872–1944

G. Spencer-Brown (1923–2016) British mathematician

Source: Laws of Form, (1969), p. 1, cited in Niklas Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory, Walter de Gruyter, 1993 p. 223.

“We speak of concrete and not 'abstract painting', because we have finished with the period of research and speculative experience. In their search for purity artists were obliged to abstract from 'natural forms' in which the plastic elements were hidden, in order to eliminate natural forms and to replace them with 'artistic forms'. To-day the idea of 'artistic form' is as obsolete as the idea of 'natural form'. We establish the period of pure painting by constructing 'spiritual form.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Creative spirit becomes concrete.
Quote on 'Concrete art', in: 'Comments on the basic of concrete painting', Paris, January 1930; 'Art Concret', April 1930, pp. 2–4
1926 – 1931

“The new plastic idea thus correctly represents actual aesthetic relationships. To the modern artist, it is a natural consequence of all the plastic ideas of the past. This is particularly true of painting, which is the art least bound to contingencies. The picture can be a pure reflection of life in its deepest essence.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

“The rectangular picture-plane indicates the starting point of Suprematism; a new realism of color conceived as non-objective creation. The forms of Suprematist art live like all the living forms of nature. This is a new plastic realism, plastic precisely because the realism of hills, sky and water is missing. Every real form is a world. And any plastic surface is more alive than a (drawn or painted) face from which stares a pair of eyes and a smile. [1914]”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, cited in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 452
1910 - 1920

“This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and color. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and color, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary color.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919