Toward Abstraction : Ranking European Painters of the Early Twentieth Century

Paris was the undisputed capital of modern art in the nineteenth century, but during the earlytwentieth century major innovations began to occur elsewhere in Europe. This paper examines thecareers of the artists who led such movements as Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, Holland'sDe Stijl, and Russia's Suprematism. Quantitative analysis reveals the conceptual basis of the art ofUmberto Boccioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Kazimir Malevich, and Edvard Munch, and the experimentalbasis of the innovations of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian. That the invention ofabstract art was made nearly simultaneously by the conceptual Malevich and the experimentalKandinsky and Mondrian emphasizes the importance of both deductive and inductive approachesin the history of modern art