Line in Avant-Garde Art

The late 19th and early 20th century was unique time in art history. Discoveries made in mathematics and physics, development of new philosophical concepts, and social and political disturbances laid the foundation for a fundamental shift in artistic ideals and objectives of art.Changes brought to the perception of art, and two-dimensional art in particular, during the early 20th century were explored based on the theoretical works by the artists and philosophers of the avant-garde era — including Western Europe’s Futurists and Cubists Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Albert Gleizes, and Jean Metzinger, philosophers Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, Oswald Spengler; Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde artists Oleksandr Bohomazov, Kazimir Malevich, Vasyl Kandinsky, Oleksandr Rodchenko, Naum Gabo, and Natan Pevsner, Ilia Zdanevich, and Mykhailo Larionov, art theorists PavelFlorensky and Alexander Gabrichevsky.The article focuses on analyzing the works by the theorists of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde covering the perception of a line as one of the primary forming elements of art, its expressive potential and features. The article defines the role and importance of line in different kinds of avant-garde art. It explores the background of a generalized understanding of dimensional works of art, paintingand graphics in particular, by avant-garde artists, defines the influence the theory of avant-garde had on the development of drawing as the art of line, and describes the major areas of researching the further development of drawing during the 20th and 21st centuries.