Abstractionists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of artists or thinkers who prioritize concepts over physical details, often exploring the essence of subjects through simplified forms
2. Individuals dedicated to the practice of abstraction, emphasizing ideas and emotions rather than realistic representation in their work
3. Practitioners who focus on the theoretical aspects of art or thought, reducing subjects to their fundamental characteristics and ignoring representational accuracy

Etymology: Abstractionists are the plural of "abstractionist", a noun formed from "abstraction" plus the agent suffix "-ist", which marks a person who practises or adheres to something. "Abstraction" itself comes from Latin "abstractio", from "abstrahere", meaning "to draw away", built from "ab" ("away") and "trahere" ("to draw"). The original sense was the mental act of separating a quality from the object it belongs to, so the word began as a term of logic and philosophy before it came to describe painting. The art sense emerged in the early twentieth century, when painters began moving away from recognisable subjects. "Abstractionist" was used as a label for such artists in the 1900s and 1910s, and the word is most closely tied to the movements of that period, including Wassily Kandinsky's non-representational work, which he produced around 1910 and 1911. Its meaning therefore follows the Latin sense closely: the painter draws the image away from the visible world.

Synonyms: theorists, philosophers, conceptualists, ideologists, idealists