By placing abstract art within its political and cultural history, Anna Moszynska elucidates a form that, since its origin, has bewildered its admirers and detractors alike. She offers the reader a comprehensive trajectory of abstraction-- from the radically new pictorial language of Bella and Delaunnay, to the visceral spirituality of Kandinsky and Mondrian, to the geometrically-obsessed artists of the 1930s and 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, and finally, the revival of Abstraction practiced by Neo-Geo, among others, in the 1980s. A succinct and 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.