Abstraction is generally seen as an artistic achievement of the 20th
century, yet the roots of this development can already be found in 19th
century France. With their artistic innovations and the Impressionists,
as well as van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gaugin, France paved the way for
Modernist painting by distancing themselves from the illustration of
reality and making form, color, light, and structure the focus of their
painting. With its juxtaposition of important works of art from the 19th
and 20th centuries, this work presents the exciting development of
abstraction, which rose out of the legacy of French painting.