JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2157

“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”–W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art,  translated by Michael T. H. Sadler, 1912.

I’m not sure exactly when the first published non-represntational/purely abstract book illustrations appear–perhaps it is with the Kandinsky book in 1912. Kandinsky is widely seen as being probably the first to produce art where there was “nothing” of the physical/representational world recognizable in the artwork–this around 1910/11. The trend was widely seen in the Impressionist movement of the 1860’s/70’s+ (and with James Whistler 30 and forty years earlier) though finding art like this in book form published contemporarily with the artwork itself is a fairly rare event.  By later 1911 and through 1912 completely non-representational painting was seen in the work of many, including Gelizes, Delauny, Kupka, Dove, Picabia, and others.

What I found particularly interesting in this image by Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) was that not only was it a book/pamphlet illustration, but it was on the cover, as well.  I know this must be very early for artwork such as this to be published in a book, but it strikes me as being very unusual that it is straight-away the first thing you see.