By placing abstract art within its political & cultural history Anna Moszynska elucidates a form that since its origin has bewildered its admirers & detractors alike. She offers the reader a comprehensive trajectory of abstraction-- from the radically new pictorial language of Bella & Delaunnay to the visceral spirituality of Kandinsky & Mondrian to the geometrically-obsessed artists of the 1930s & 1940s. The author takes us from the origin of the movement during the First World War to the post-World War II Zeitgeist that emphasized personal expression & finally the revival of Abstraction practiced by Neo-Geo among others in the 1980s. A succinct & deftly written account of abstraction Moszynska offers both an overview of the philosophy of the movement as well as analyses of the approaches of individual artists.