In modern art’s constructivist-concrete movements, the human body was largely ignored as a subject, or as an element in the production of art. As Theo van Doesberg declared in 1930, the focus was on the autonomy of the line, colour and surface as artistic means. Figurative representations, on the other hand, were dismissed as illusionistic and speculative. This rational approach, devoted to intellect, mathematics and systematics, resolutely rejected the notion of also taking one’s own body into account.

This book accompanying the international group exhibition The Body Within Abstraction offers a pleasurable and critical examination of the entrenched perception that rational non-representational art is devoid of any references to the body. It presents examples in which the body becomes both a formal prerequisite and a thematic basis for minimalistically reduced and non-figurative works by Heidi Bucher, Eva Fàbregas, Kimsooja, Dóra Maurer, Bruce Nauman, Steven Parrino, Chiharu Shiota and Franz West.