If Cubism opened the road to simplifying form through geometry, Geometric Abstraction was able to pass the threshold of what is real to achieve the purest form.

The background of this trend can be found in the theories of color systematized by Eugène Chevreul and the mathematically based compositions of the Puteaux Group. The elimination of any content with an emotional character that might reflect the artist’s presence was put forth by them as the primary objective. Line and color must be the structural basis for each work.

In Geometric Abstraction, many different attitudes are joined together, from the Dutch neoplasticism of Piet Modrian to the utilitarian concept of Art expounded by the Bauhaus movement in Germany. In Russia, the figure of Malévitch stands out. In 1915 he published the Suprematist Manifest. In Holland, the De Stijl group achieved extraordinarily harmonious results accentuating the absence of nuances with reference to color and form. In France, Léger and Picabia tended towards cubist forms treated with intense coloring.

All over the developed world, functionality and harmony became primary categories of a mathematical order, capable of creating new, non-figurative realities. Facts that apparently have little to do with the daily necessities of human beings, but which become highly transcendental, thanks to the creativity of the artists belonging to movements such as Post-pictorial Abstraction, Color Field painting, Op Art or Minimalism.