Concrete art is an
art movement with a strong emphasis on abstraction. The artist
Theo van Doesburg, closely associated with the
De Stijl art movement, coined the term "concrete art" as he in 1930 founded the group
Art Concret and articulated its features in a
manifesto titled "The Basis of Concrete Art", signed by four other artists of the group, including
Otto G. Carlsund, Jean Hélion and Leon Tutundjian. The manifesto explained that the resultant art should be non-referential insofar as its components should
not refer to, or allude to, the entities normally encountered in the natural, visible world. This is a distinction from
abstraction generally. In a more general sense "abstract art" could and often does include the "abstraction of forms in nature". But "concrete art" was intended to emanate "directly from the mind" and consequently to be more "cerebral" than abstract art generally. Concrete art is often composed of basic visual features such as planes, colors, and forms. "Sentiment" tends to be absent from concrete art. The "hand" of the artist may be difficult to detect in finished works of concrete art; concrete art may appear, in some instances, to have been made by a machine. Concrete art often has a core visual reference to geometry whereas more general abstract art may find its basis in the components of the natural world. A formulation of a description of concrete art might include a considerable reliance on the
formal qualities of an artwork. Theo Van Doesburg's manifesto stated that art "should receive nothing from nature's formal properties or from sensuality or sentimentality. We want to exclude lyricism, dramaticism, symbolism, etc…." In concrete art a mathematical equation can serve as a starting point. Concrete art can include painting and sculpture.