Surveying the art of five decades, from 1867 to 1917, this publication follows the broad and diverse ways that artists and their public, little by little, learnt to see and to judge works of art abstractly. Apart from Kandinsky, the first generation of abstract painters included Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevih, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Frantisek Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Giacomo Balla, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Paul Klee, Arther Dove and Patrick Henry Bruce.