Leonardo da Vinci was an illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant. He was born on April 15 1452 in the Tuscan hill town Vinci Italy. As his mother married another man, Leonardo lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco. Little is known about Leonardo’s early life that’s why a lot of people came up with various conjectures in order to explain his great success. Leonardo’s father and mother both had other children after his birth.

Leonardo at a young age had the access to a lot of books. These books were scholarly texts of his friends and family. This was also the period in which he was introduced to Andrea del Verrochio, a well known painter, sculptor and goldsmith in Florence. As the workshop is one of the most prestigious intellectual centers at the time, Leonardo already had the edge and potential to become an achiever in his own right. But he would eventually exceed everyone’s expectations. Right now he is not just considered an achiever but a universal genius for all ages. As he was learning a lot from Verrochio, he painted a lot of art works. A highlight of his paintings at this time was an angel in Verrochio’s “Baptism of Christ.” The painting clearly showed that da Vinci was a better painter than Verrochio. Even if he only painted the angel, Leonardo did so much better.

After his stint at Verrochio’s workshop, Leonardo started to establish himself as an artist. About five years later he served the Duke of Milan even if he still had to complete “The Adoration of the Magi,” his first commission in Florence. For about seventeen years Leonardo lived and did many things in Milan. The highlights of these activities are his various achievements in the fields of science and art. Aside from painting and sculpting numerous works, he also designed buildings, machinery, and weapons. As if all of his achievements were not enough, he also did piles of studies on geometry, nature, architecture, mechanics, municipal construction, and flying machines.

In the years after the Duke fell from power, Leonardo continued to have more commissions with other people. He also traveled throughout Italy. The succeeding years saw him working for the Pope but he never got tired of producing achievements and studies on the other fields. Long before he died, Leonardo was already one of the greatest individuals to conquer the world.

Abstract art is very popular. And there is a good reason for this popularity. Abstract pictures go very well in most situations. There are no connections or concrete images – the art is expressive and suggestive and adds drama to any situation in which it is placed. Abstract art is generally understood to be the form of art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colors in a nonrepresentational or subjective way.

According to art experts, in its purest form in Western art, an abstract art is one without a recognizable subject, one which does not relate to something external. This type of ornamental art, without figurative representation occurs today in many cultures. As the modern abstract movement in sculpture and paining emerged in Europe and North America between 1910 and 1920, two approaches have been generally accepted to produce different abstract styles: images that have been “abstracted” from nature to the point where they no longer reflect a conventional reality, and nonobjective, or “pure” art forms, which do not share any reference to reality. A further distinction tends to be made between abstract art which is geometric, such as the work of Piet Mondrian, and abstract art that is more fluid, such as in the works of Wassily Kandinsky. It was Kandinsky who once said that “of all arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and of colors, and that you are a true poet; this last is essential.”

Abstract art began in the avant-garde movements of the late 19th century -Impressionism, neo-Impressionism, and post-Impressionism. These painting styles reduced the importance of the original subject matter and began to emphasize the creative process of painting itself. As artists in Europe at the early twentieth century “broke free” from the conventional representational rules art forms had to follow, figurative abstractions, or simplifications of reality, where detail is eliminated from recognizable objects leaving only the essence or some degree of recognizable form, became popular increasing the variations of art forms and view points. With different abstract styles, like Synchronism and Orphism, abstract art emphasized on color over form, on feelings over logic. The action painting of an American Abstract Expressionist, Jackson Pollock, who dripped, dropped, smeared, spattered, or thrown paint on the canvas, is a good example of such a tremendous change in art focus and technique.

After the introduction of technology and the mass utilization of software programs that assisted people “play around” with their own photographs, paintings or other art forms, abstract art has gained more popularity than ever before. But although being able to draw well is not an issue anymore, as Kandinsky pointed out, being a “true” poet is what still separates the amateur attempts to create abstract art from the artifacts of a true talent.