#Halley

Whitechapel Gallery |15 January – 6 April 2015

Admission: standard entry £9.95

December 1915 was a key moment in the history of Abstract art. The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: 0.10 opened in St. Petersburg with a display of paintings by Kazimir Malevich featuring blocks of colour floating against white backgrounds. Powerfully reductive, these were the very first examples of geometrical abstraction. One hundred years later, Black and White. Suprematist Composition from 0.10 in 1915, is the opening piece of this exhibition at Whitechapel.

Abstraction had been gathering pace in Europe since 1911, thanks to a group of painters who believed a new style of art was needed to encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. Rejecting methods which focused solely on reproducing visual objects, they instead used colour, shape and texture to create new images.

Here the gallery brings together paintings, sculptures, film and photographs which trace the development of abstraction over the last century. As well as exploring its intimate connection with society. – Art Fund