Abstract Art: A Global History by Pepe Karmel

In his fresh take on abstract art, now available in paperback and updated, noted art historian Pepe Karmel chronicles the movement from a global perspective, while embedding abstraction in a recognizable reality.

Moving beyond the canonical terrain of abstract art, the author demonstrates how artists from around the world have used abstract imagery to express social, cultural, and spiritual experience.

Karmel builds this fresh approach to abstract art around five inclusive themes: body, landscape, cosmology, architecture, and man-made signs and patterns. In the process, this history develops a series of narratives that go far beyond the established figures and movements traditionally associated with abstract art.