Figurative abstraction combines elements of figurative art and abstract art, creating works that move between recognizable imagery and expressive, non-representational form. Often described as abstract figurative art or abstract figuration, this genre challenges viewers to navigate between the tangible and the conceptual.

Explore a curated selection of figurative abstraction prints and limited edition artworks for sale, featuring leading contemporary artists such as Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, and Georg Baselitz. Blending gesture, color, and form, these works balance emotional intensity with painterly abstraction.

This collection brings together figurative abstract prints and editions that reflect the ongoing dialogue between figuration and abstraction. Available online with secure checkout and worldwide insured shipping.

Figurative Abstraction is a central approach within contemporary art that merges recognizable subject matter with abstract visual language. Often referred to as figurative abstract art or abstract figurative painting, it moves fluidly between depiction and dissolution, allowing artists to explore perception, memory, and emotion through distortion, gesture, and form.

Unlike purely abstract art, figurative abstraction retains traces of the human figure, landscape, or object. At the same time, it rejects strict representation, creating compositions that are open, ambiguous, and psychologically charged. This tension between figuration and abstraction defines the genre and gives it its distinctive visual and conceptual depth.

Across painting, prints, photography, and edition-based works, figurative abstraction has become a key strategy for contemporary artists. It enables a shift away from literal representation toward a more interpretative and expressive visual language, where meaning emerges through composition, color, and material.

Artists such as Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, and Georg Baselitz have played a defining role in shaping contemporary figurative abstraction. Their works demonstrate how the human figure can be fragmented, inverted, or dissolved into painterly structures, while still retaining its presence.

Cecily Brown’s paintings, for example, blur the boundary between abstraction and figuration through dense, gestural compositions. Her work oscillates between legibility and dissolution, inviting viewers to move between image and surface.

Dana Schutz approaches figurative abstract painting through narrative and distortion. Her compositions combine exaggerated forms with vivid color, creating psychologically charged scenes that question perception and representation.

Georg Baselitz introduced a radical strategy by inverting his figures, disrupting traditional viewing and emphasizing the formal qualities of painting. His work highlights how abstract figuration can shift attention from subject matter to structure, color, and composition.

Together, these artists demonstrate how figurative abstraction continues to evolve as a key language within contemporary art, bridging the gap between the visible world and abstract expression.

The development of figurative abstraction can be traced back to the 19th century, when artists began loosening the relationship between representation and form. Painters such as J.M.W. Turner and Eugène Delacroix introduced expressive color, atmosphere, and gesture, subtly abstracting the visible world.

This trajectory continued with artists like Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, who pushed figuration toward structural and emotional interpretation. Cézanne’s reduction of forms into geometric structures, in particular, laid important groundwork for both abstraction and abstract figurative art.

In the early 20th century, movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism further destabilized traditional representation. Artists including Pablo Picasso and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner fragmented the human figure, while Umberto Boccioni translated it into dynamic, abstracted forms.

By the mid-20th century, abstract art had become dominant through movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. By the late 20th century, however, a renewed interest in the figure emerged. Artists began reintroducing figuration within an abstract framework, giving rise to what is now known as contemporary figurative abstraction, closely tied to the broader post-1980 revival of figuration.

Figures such as Georg Baselitz and Cecily Brown played a key role in this shift. Associated with the “return to painting” in the 1980s and 1990s, they redefined how figurative abstract painting could operate, combining expressive abstraction with the persistence of the human form.

Today, figurative abstraction remains a vital field within contemporary art, continuously evolving across painting, photography, and limited edition prints and multiples, where the dialogue between abstraction and representation continues to unfold.