The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art: History Reframed: Autumn 2025 Lecture Series

Art Historian Dr Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation. See series info »

Week 6: The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art

This week we discuss the progressive fragmentation and transformation of painting, beginning with the innovative approach to breaking down the visual world made famous by Pablo Picasso and his Cubism. Seeking to capture and convey the underlying structures of the perceivable world, painting began to reduce forms to geometric shapes and simple colours. This did not end with Cubism, however. By the early 20th century, artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian would continue this process, seeing increasingly abstract art as a way to produce a spiritual response in viewers, relying on pure form and colour to provide a transcendental experience. Leading to the first truly abstract art, these important movements paved the way for the rich diversity of styles, concepts, and approaches which continue to inform art today.

1. Tues 16 September
The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism

2. Tues 23 September
Impressionism & Modern Life

3. Tues 30 September
Post-Impressionism

4. Tues 7 October
The Artist’s Inner World – Expressionism & Surrealism

5. Tues 14 October
The New Industrial Era – Futurism to Pop Art

6. Tues 21 October
The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art