Modern art or “classical modernism“ begins with the 20th century. Modern art contains still the realistic figurative representation but also its rejection up to total abstraction. It is characterized by artistic experimentation and the rejection of the traditional use of colours and forms. The classical modernism includes different art styles as expressionism, cubismus or “New objectivity“.
Abstraction refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world, not excluding the referring to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.