The artists of the Organic School of the Russian avant-garde found inspiration as well as a model for artistic growth in the creative principles of nature. Isabel Wunsche analyzes the artistic influences, intellectual foundations, and scientific publications that shaped the formation of these artists, the majority of whom were based in St. Petersburg. Particular emphasis is given to the holistic worldviews and organic approaches prevalent among artists of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde, specifically Jan Ciągliński, Nikolai Kulbin, and Elena Guro, as well as the emergence of the...

Traditional art is based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of." Abstract art, in contrast, either adopts alternative modes of visual representation or reconfigures mimetic convention. This book explores the relation of abstract art to nature (taking nature in the broadest sense the world of recognisable objects, creatures, organisms, processes, and states of affairs).

Abstract art takes many different forms, but there are shared key structural features centered on two basic relations to nature. The first abstracts from...