Geometry in art

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Like art, geometry is a way of understanding the world.  Artists have applied the laws of geometry throughout the ages to achieve harmony in compositions, but geometric shapes have also been used as symbols, often with spiritual connotations. 

The word geometry comes from the Greek for “earth” and “measuring”. Ever since classical antiquity, geometry has been a branch of mathematics, the study of figures and spatial relationships. The fundaments of geometry, such as the point, the line, volume and symmetry, have also been key concepts in art throughout history. The link between art and science is manifest in Olafur Eliasson’s Model Room, where the artist has collaborated with the mathematician and architect Einar Thorsteinn for decades to explore the infinite potential of geometry.

In modern art, the impressionist Paul Cézanne’s abstraction of motifs into geometric shapes had a seminal influence on the development of cubism under Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Wassily Kandinsky’s theories on the interaction of colour and geometry also had a huge impact. In Sweden, Hilma af Klint, a pioneer of abstraction, used geometry in her spiritual art, and Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN) wrote a modernist manifesto, Divine Geometry: an essay on art. Throughout modern art, geometry has been revisited and given new meanings, as in Russian constructivism, Brazilian neo-concretism and American minimalism.

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