1910

Wassily Kandinsky makes first abstract paintings in Munich, Germany

Frantisek Kupka moves to Paris, France

Richard Mortensen is born in Copenhagen, Denmark

Aurélie Nemours is born in Paris, France

Roman Clemens is born on February 11 in Dessau

Hubert Döllner is born on July 11 in Elbing

Jean Leppien is born in Luneburg, Germany

Arthur Dove begins producing "extractions" or non-objective abstract compositions based on pulsating forms in nature; Dove also produces images expressive of sounds

The Independents Show is mounted

Paul Feeley is born in Des Moines, Iowa

In Paris, Frantisek Kupka makes first experiments in pure color abstraction

Marcel Duchamp paints "Nude Descending a Staircase"

"Group of Plastic Artists (Skupina Vytvarnych Umelcu)", a Bohemian avant-garde group, is founded; In February a fundamental rift between the older and younger generations in the "Mánes Union of Artists" is occasioned by the fall in subscriptions to the union’s journal "Volné smery" after its new editors, Emil Filla and Antonín Matejcek, reproduced Picasso’s work and published Filla’s article on the virtues of the new primitivism; The majority of the young contributors to the journal pointedly withdraw from the "Mánes Union of Artists"; Towards the end of 1911, they establish the "Group of Plastic Artists", oriented towards Cubism; Its members areVincenc Benes, V. H. Brunner, Josef Capek, Emil Filla, Josef Gocár, Otto Gutfreund, Vlastislav Hofman, Josef Chochol, Pavel Janák, Zdenek Kratochvíl, Frantisek Kysela, Antonín Procházka, Ladislav Síma, Václav Spála, the writers Karel Capek and Frantisek Langer, and the art historian V. V. Stech; For personal reasons and differences of opinion, Bohumil Kubista, Otokar Kubín and Matejcek remained outside the group and soon returned to the Mánes Union; Gocár was elected the group’s first president

Piet Mondrian moves to Paris, France

Olle Baertling is born in Halmstad, Sweden

Jo Delahaut is born in Vottem-Lez-Liège, Belgium

Jean Deyrolle is born in Nogent-sur-Marne, France

Franz Weissmann is born in Knittefeld, Austria

Wassily Kandinsky publishes "On the Spiritual in Art" based on a non-scientific approach to color and feeling

Robert Delaunay begins painting "Windows" series

Giacomo Balla makes first paintings concerned with the representation of movement

Marcel Duchamp makes first "ready-made" sculpture "Bicycle Wheel"

"Rayonism", an abstract style of painting, is developed by the Russian artist Mikhail Larionov

Wyndham Lewis makes first non-objective print portfolio; Lewis is part of the English "Vorticists" who are developing abstract works using precision and machine aesthetics

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt (Gego) is born on August 1 in Hamburg, Germany

Robert Jacobsen is born in Copenhagen, Denmark

Verena Loewensberg is born in Zurich, Switzerland

Adolf Luther is born in Krefeld, Germany

Max Hermann Mahlmann is born in Hamburg, Germany

Nicolas Schöffer is born in Kalocsa, Hungary

Alexander Liberman is born on September 4 in Kiev, Russia

Círculo de Bellas Artes is founded in Caracas, Venezuela, in reaction to the reigning tradition of academic painting; Artists set up an independent studio without teachers or prescribed aesthetic boundaries, with an emphasis on open-air painting; Artists travel to Europe and bring back latest artistic trends

Xul Solar relocates from Argentina to Europe (until 1924)

Arthur Dove's mounts first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery, New York, NY; Exhibits 10 pastel drawings showing organic Futurism

Marsden Hartley leaves to study in Europe

Agnes Martin is born on March 22 in Macklin, Saskatchewan, Canada

Tony Smith is born in Orange, New Jersey

Morris Louis is born in Baltimore, Maryland

John Cage is born in Los Angeles, California

Sonia Delaunay begins making abstract paintings

Mikhail Larionov publishes his manifesto on "Rayonism"; Based on Futurist ideas, "Rayonism" stresses individual lines or "rays" as the core element of a painting; Signed by Natalia Gontcharova

In Paris, Americans Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell develop a color theory known as "Synchromism"; The name was chosen to suggest musical associations (symphony) through color (chrome); It was Russell’s idea that paintings could be created based on sculptural forms interpreted two-dimensionally through a knowledge of colour properties. Synchromist paintings, stressing an emphasis on colour rhythms, were composed of abstract shapes, often concealing the submerged forms of figures; The two artists first attracted attention at the Neue Kunstsalon in Munich in June 1913; Their second exhibition of Synchromist painting was at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris from October to November 1913

Ad Reinhardt is born on December 24 in Buffalo, New York

Umberto Boccioni makes first sculptures evoking physical movement

"Vorticism", a British artistic and literary movement, is founded by the editor of Blast magazine, Wyndham Lewis, and members of the Rebel Art Centre; It encompassed not only painting, drawing and printmaking, but also the sculpture of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein and the photographs of Alvin Langdon Coburn; Notable literary allies were Ezra Pound, who coined the term "Vorticism" early in 1914, and T. S. Eliot

Franz Weissmann is born in Knittefeld, Austria

Marcel Floris is born in Hyères, France

Ernst Hermanns is born in Münster, Germany

Hans Wegner is born on April 2 in Tønder, Denmark

Walter Kaitna is born in Vienna, Austria

Jan J. Schoonhoven is born in Delft, The Netherlands

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founds the Whitney Studio at 8 W. 8th Street in New York City adjoining her own studio to exhibit her collection of American artists

Jean Crotti moves to New York City (1914-16)

Kazimir Malevich begins making Suprematist paintings, including "Black Square," "Black Circle," "Black Cross" and other black-and-white and red-and-white works; Malevich's "The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 (Zero-Ten)" at Galerie Dobychina, Petrograd, Russia (December 19 - January 19, 1916)

Iwan Puni (Jean Pougny) organizes the exhibitions "0.10" and "Tramway V" in Russia

Vladimir Tatlin makes his "Complex Corner Relief," a metal construction suspended from wires that projects into the gallery space

Natalia Gontcharova leaves Russia

Mathias Goeritz is born in Danzig, Germany

"MA" group, an Hungarian group of artists and writers, active, is founded (1916-26); It was associated with the journal "MA", whose name was derived from the Hungarian for "today"; Founded by the writer and artist Lajos Kassák, "MA" first appeared in November 1916, and it was banned in Hungary on 14 July 1919; It was published in Budapest, at first edited solely by Kassák, and by 1917 also by Béla Uitz. From May 1, 1920 until its demise in mid-1926 it was published in Vienna under Kassák’s sole editorship; It was the most important forum for Hungarian Activism, and over the years its members included Sándor Bortnyik, Péter Dobrovic, Lajos Gulácsy, János Kmetty, János Máttis Teutsch, László Moholy-Nagy, Jószef Nemes Lampérth, and Béla Uitz, among others.; The first issue had a Cubist cover by the Czech artist Vincenc Benes and an article by Kassák entitled "A plakát es az uj festészet (The poster and the new painting", which set the revolutionary tone of the group; The article suggested that painting should aspire to the same aggressive power as that achieved by posters: "The new painter is a moral individual, full of faith and a desire for unity! And his pictures are weapons of war!."; Many members of the "MA" group did produce posters during the short Communist regime under Béla Kun in 1919

Peter Keetman is born in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Germany

Umberto Boccioni dies on August 17 in Sorte, Verona, Italy

Richard Pousette-Dart is born

Harold Cousins is born in Washington, DC

Kazimir Malevich paints "White on White" works (thru 1918)

Laszló Moholy-Nagy becomes a member of the "MA" group in Budapest, Hungary

Gottfried Honegger is born in Zurich, Switzerland

Michael Kidner is born in Kettering, England

Mario Nigro is born in Pistoia, Italy

Jean Legros is born in Paris, France

Alfred Stieglitz closes his gallery 291 (1905-1917)

Edna Andrade is born in Portsmouth, Virginia

Manny Farber is born

Camille Graeser moves to Stuttgart and opens a interior decorating and design studio (1918-33)

Bart van der Leck leaves the "De Stijl" group and begins applying geometric principals to figurative work

Olga Rozanova dies on November 8 in Moscow, Russia

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney transforms her Whitney Studio to the Whitney Studio Club

Ronald Bladen is born in Vancouver, Canada

The Bauhaus, the German art, design and architecture school, is founded by Walter Gropius; It was active in Weimar from 1919 to 1925, in Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and in Berlin from 1932 to 1933, when it was closed down by the Nazi authorities; The Bauhaus’s name referred to the medieval Bauhütten or masons’ lodges; The school re-established workshop training, as opposed to impractical academic studio education; Its contribution to the development of Functionalism in architecture was widely influential; It exemplified the contemporary desire to form unified academies incorporating art colleges, colleges of arts and crafts and schools of architecture, thus promoting a closer cooperation between the practice of "fine" and "applied" art and architecture; Mies van der Rohe invites Johannes Itten to teach the foundation course at the Bauhaus and to develop his color theories

Kazimir Malevich begins producing Suprematist fabric designs

The journal "MA", founded by the writer and artist Lajos Kassák, is banned in Hungary on July 14, 1919

Nikolaj Michajlovich Suetin becomes a member of the group "Unowis"

Sándor Bortnyik moves to Vienna and then to Weimar

Mira Schendel is born in Zurich, Switzerland

Gordon Walters is born in Wellington, New Zealand

Colin McCahon is born in Timaru, New Zealand