Publication Details

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse the geometrical aspects of a series of modern paintings and to show the parallel between them and the development of modern geometry. It starts with El Greco, offering a geometrical explanation of his painting the figures in a prolonged manner. Further the analogy between the impressionist way of creating space (in the works of Turner, Monet and Seurat) and the geometrical idea of Cayley to use projective space as a basis for non-Euclidean geometry is reconstructed. Next the paper describes the parallel between the creation of space in the paintings of Cézanne and Picasso and the concept of space in algebraic topology. In conclusion the paper deals with the analogy between Kandinskiś abstract paintings and the set-theoretical foundations of geometry.