从20世纪初开始，西方的抽象艺术吸引、激怒和迷惑了众多观众。它在艺术主流中的被接受之路是漫长的。Anna Moszynska追溯了抽象艺术的起源和演变，并将其置于广阔的文化背景中。她研究了康定斯基，马列维奇和蒙德里安的开拓性作品，以及俄国的建构主义者，德斯太尔抽象画派和包豪斯艺术家，对比了20世纪30年代和40年代的欧洲几何抽象，并强调了第二次世界大战后的个人表达。对战后时期的军事行动艺术，动力艺术和极简主义艺术进行了详细讨论和说明，新的章节将描述进行了更新，探讨了20世纪80年代抽象艺术的危机以及近几十年来油漆，织物，雕塑和装置艺术的复兴。

本书的第一版于1990年出版，受到评论家的好评。现在经过全彩处理和全面修订，它将成为新一代了解抽象艺术的最佳入门书。

Since the early years of the 20th century, Western abstract art has fascinated, outraged and bewildered audiences. Its path to acceptance within the artistic mainstream was slow. Anna Moszynska traces the origins and evolution of abstract art, placing it in broad cultural context. She examines the pioneering work of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian alongside the Russian Constructivists, the De Stijl group and the Bauhaus artists, contrasting European geometric abstraction in the 1930s and 40s with the emphasis on personal expression after the Second World War. Op, Kinetic and Minimal art of the postwar period is discussed and illustrated in detail, and new chapters bring the account up to date, exploring the crisis in abstraction of the 1980s and its revival in paint, fabric, sculpture and installation in recent decades.

The first edition of this book, published in 1990, was acclaimed by reviewers; now in full colour and comprehensively revised, it will serve as the best introduction to abstract art for a new generation.