Abstraction-création

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Abstraction-création: art non-figuratif was an avant-garde cahier published in Paris annually from 1932-1936. The editors were Jean Hélion (Issue 1), Auguste Herbin (2), Georges Vantongerloo (3-4), and Étienne Béothy (5).

The cahier was published by the eponymous association, uniting art movements that worked in and advocated abstraction. The magazine not only formalised a new tendency for language in visual art, but also became a form of explicit self-promotion and opposition against the growing force of figurative Surrealism. Two minimal yet clearly articulated criteria needed to be fulfilled in order to become a member of the association: one had to be an artist and one had to work non-figuratively. This resulted in a list of members that included long-forgotten artists as well as names such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Calder, Delaunay, Van Doesburg, and Brancusi.

One year after the establishment of the association, the first issue of the cahier Abstraction-création was published. Most of the members submitted documentation of work along with self-written texts. Those writings were reflections on their own work, detailed explanations of the documentation, viewing instructions, epistles about the meaning of abstract art, essays on the relation between abstract art and evolution, etc.

Contributors included Jean Arp, Katherine Dreier, Hans Erni, Naum Gabo, Albert Gleizes, Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, Théo Kerg, František Kupka, Bart van der Leck, Alberto Magnelli, Piet Mondrian, Marlow Moss, Ben Nicholson, Taro Okamoto, Wolfgang Paalen, John Wardell Power, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Leon Tutundjian, Paule Vézelay, a.o.

Issues[edit]

Abstraction-création 1 (1932). PDF (52 mb).
Abstraction-création 2 (1933). PDF (54 mb).
Abstraction-création 3 (1934). PDF (53 mb).
Abstraction-création 4 (1935). PDF (34 mb).
Abstraction-création 5 (1936). PDF (27 mb).

The above PDFs were assembled from scans on IADDB.org.

Gallica also has scans of all 5 issues.

Reprints[edit]

  • Abstraction-création: art non-figuratif, New York: Arno Press, 1968.
  • [Reprint and English translation.] Abstraction-création: art non-figuratif, ed. Will Holder, Amsterdam: Kunstverein Publishing, 2014, 296 pp. [1] [2]

Links[edit]


Avant-garde and modernist magazines

Poesia (1905-09, 1920), Der Sturm (1910-32), Blast (1914-15), The Egoist (1914-19), The Little Review (1914-29), 291 (1915-16), MA (1916-25), De Stijl (1917-20, 1921-32), Dada (1917-21), Noi (1917-25), 391 (1917-24), Zenit (1921-26), Broom (1921-24), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (1922), Die Form (1922, 1925-35), Contimporanul (1922-32), Secession (1922-24), Klaxon (1922-23), Merz (1923-32), LEF (1923-25), G (1923-26), Irradiador (1923), Sovremennaya architektura (1926-30), Novyi LEF (1927-29), ReD (1927-31), Close Up (1927-33), transition (1927-38).