Beyond Form: Abstraction at Midcentury

Featuring 65 artists from more than 23 countries, this exhibition explores how abstraction emerged as a powerful visual language between 1940 and 1970, a period of global upheaval and transformation. While abstraction allowed artists across the world to move beyond realism to convey complex emotions, ideas, and experiences, it was not a singular movement. There was no one reason artists turned to abstraction, no one abstract technique or style. The impulses, methods, and resulting artworks were wildly divergent. Many artists responded to shifting social and political climates by employing materials in unexpected and, at times, deliberately destructive ways. Processes such as burning, tearing, folding, and layering embraced chance and resisted categorization. Others drew inspiration from their natural and built environments as they sought to ground themselves after the instability wrought by World War II. Some artists explored language, breaking characters and letters into illegible symbols, responding to the inability to communicate the horrors of war and through a lens of cultural exchange. As artists moved across the globe—whether through forced exile or voluntary travel for education—they formed groups to develop innovative techniques and exchange ideas. Among these groups were Gutai in Japan, Atelier 17 in Paris and New York, Tamarind Lithography Workshop in California, ZERO in Germany, and Grupo Frente in Brazil. Confronting censorship, inequality, and displacement, artists turned to abstraction as a means of practicing freedom of expression in the face of oppression and making sense of wartime atrocities. _Beyond Form_ offers an expansive view of the various sources and techniques of abstraction during this period, from collage to word play to sweeping gestures. Drawn primarily from the Art Institute’s collection, the exhibition includes works by artists such as Ruth Asawa, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, and Yayoi Kusama. More than 30 of these works have been acquired in the last decade, and many are on view for the first time at the museum. This continued collecting is a testament to the Art Institute’s commitment to expanding the history of abstraction and to showcasing fully its unique capacity to challenge established worldviews, deepen understanding, and foster acceptance of diverse realities and experiences. _Beyond Form: Abstraction at Midcentury_ is curated by Mel Becker Solomon, associate research curator, with Chloé Glass, research associate, both of the museum’s Prints and Drawings department.