Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century

until May 18, 2025

At the beginning of the 20th century, painting underwent a profound transformation. Artists no longer wanted to depict the visible; they aspired to a new visual language that reduced artistic expression to an interplay of colors, lines, and shapes. Geometric Abstraction viewed these elements as a visual language that reflected the modern world and transcended national boundaries. Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century spans six decades and showcases how Geometric Abstraction found radical expression in all its variations in Europe and the USA.

#KandinskyBarberini

Inspired by the advanced technologies and theories of their time, including concepts of the fourth dimension and the space-time continuum, artists expanded their understanding of space and time. With images of geometric shapes floating in indefinite space, they sought to represent cosmic themes and higher spiritual levels. A central figure of this art movement was Wassily Kandinsky, who laid the theoretical foundations with his work Point and Line to Plane.

Private collection

Wassily Kandinsky: Top and left, 1925

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Harry Kahn

Miriam Schapiro. Jigsaw, 1969

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was one of the first painters to explore abstraction. By tracing the stations of his life and the different phases of his abstract oeuvre, the eight chapters of the exhibition survey the most important stages of geometric abstraction.

“The title Kandinsky’s Universe is an apt description of our concept: it refers first of all to the incredibly diverse artistic environment in which Kandinsky worked and which he decisively influenced throughout his life. After Kandinsky’s death in 1944, European exiles brought his ideas to the United States, where Hard Edge painting and Optical Art emerged. But all of these currents also shared an intense interest in the use of painterly means to represent space. Artists were fascinated by the scientific and technological discoveries of their day, and they wanted their art to express new experiences of space and time. In this respect, too, Kandinsky was a pioneer.” - Sterre Barentsen, Curator

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin — Neue Nationalgalerie

László Moholy-Nagy: Composition Z VIII, 1924

Kunsthaus Zürich; Gift from Hans Arp, 1958

Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Twelve Spaces with Planes, Angular Bands, and Laid with Circles, 1939

The exhibition features 125 works by over seventy artists, including Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Victor Vasarely. The more than thirty international lenders include the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, the Fondation Gandur pour l‘Art in Genève, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

View of the exhibition

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"Curator Sterre Barentsen has put together an impressive overview of geometric-nonrepresentational art in painting and sculpture. ... The exhibition is not light fare, even if one occasionally wants to indulge in the fireworks of color. In the face of the current revolution in "artificial intelligence", it is necessary to remember the irreplaceability of the intellectual, especially in such a sensually appealing form as the art shown here"

Tagesspiegel

"Color by color, shape by shape, line by line, dot by dot: at the Barberini Museum, the abstract styles, trends, obsessions, and utopias of the 20th century flash before our eyes. Suggesting an intoxicating fusion of the senses"

Berliner Zeitung

The exhibition revolves around a “movement” that officially lasted six decades, but basically never came to an end ... Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth, Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Agnes Martin and Donald Judd - if you wanted to reduce all the artists whose names immediately pop up when you think of this theme to a common denominator, it would probably be this: The orderly interplay of surfaces, lines and colors is a universal expression of modern life all over the world. The exhibition brings together around 70 artists whose work fulfills this premise - including many great, but also unknown names that have hardly been seen or heard of ... Kandinsky´s Universe opens up endless expanses that are still far from being explored”

art

“Kandinsky`s Universe brings together the various histories of geometric abstraction in a large-scale, opulently decorated presentation ... This show impressively demonstrates that the struggle for color and form never ends beyond figuration"

monopol

"Anyone who still thinks that abstract art is cool and sober will have to give up this idea when they see Kandinsky´s Universe. The Barberini Museum tells the story of abstract art in a surprisingly sensual way. Abstract art can be fun. So, off to Potsdam!"

Berliner Morgenpost

"The exhibition is both stimulating and exhilarating"

Jüdische Allgemeine

"There is so much to discover here, it really is a universe that opens up... Gorgeous"

radiodrei

“Curator Sterre Barentsen succeeded - in addition to twelve top paintings by Kandinsky - in acquiring works on loan from celebrities of classical and late modernism: Sonia Delaunay, the “Russian Amazons” Lyubov Popova and Alexandra Exter, Vasarely, Itten, El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin, De Stijl painters such as Mondrian, as well as Bridget Riley and Frank Stella. The young art historian traveled halfway around the world and did a lot of convincing work on the diverse varieties of geometric abstraction in the 20th century"

Frankfurter Rundschau

“The title Kandinsky´s Universe is very apt ... All the works document a common heritage of Western and Eastern abstraction, which was never completely abandoned even during the Cold War and can still be rediscovered”

Deutschlandfunk

“The Museum Barberini tells the complete story of geometric abstraction - cool, but captivating ... With Kandinsky as the fixed star, curator Sterre Barentsen has created a tour that has it all”

MAZ

"Explosions of color and shapes: if you want to get a good dose of color in the middle of winter, immerse yourself in Kandinsky's Universe at the Barberini Museum."

inforadio

"Bold, minimalist, irritating - Kandinsky‘s Universe – the exhibition at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam – outlines the artist's oeuvre based on the course of his life"

n-tv

"A journey into the universe of lines and color."

dpa

"Eruptions of color and flights of fancy. Wassily Kandinsky left a trail of light in the 20th century"

PNN

Kandinsky's Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century

Catalog of the exhibition

Media Partners

ARTE
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Tagesspiegel
Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten
radio3
monopol
tip Berlin
Yorck Kino
The Berliner