Triangles and Art

Written by: Margaret Bertoni

Triangles and the Human Body

• From 900-700 B.C. there was a phase of Greek art called Geometric art.

• Around 770 B.C. the first human depictions appeared. They appeared on the handles of vases. The male was shown as a somewhat abstract figure with a triangular torso.

• Some of the triangle relationship is shown in statues, but it mostly appeared in the paintings on pottery, like vases.

• In the Islamic religion, human forms are not allowed to be in art. Geometric figures are used instead (especially when portraying Allah).

Divine Proportion

• The Divine Proportion is

• Leonardo Da Vinci made the “Vitruvian Man”, whose proportions are the Golden Ration to the extreme.

  

Geometric Shapes in Recent Art

What are Common Shapes

• Common shapes used are squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles.

How are these shapes used?

• Geometric shapes are used especially in modern art and cubism.

----Cubism is a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20th century, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure, the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents, and the organization of the planes of a represented object independently of representational requirements Definition From

Dictionary.com

What do these shapes help accomplish?

• Those simple geometric shapes are put together to form a larger, more complex picture. For example, Picasso’s Mediterranean Landscape uses triangles, squares, circles and some lines to create a landscape image.

• A major artist that painted in the cubism style was Pablo Picasso.

• He painted works like The Accordionist and The Three Musicians

Modern Art

Examples

Triangles Found

• Green Triangle: Acute and Isosceles Triangle

• Pink Triangle: Right and Scalene Triangle

• Yellow Triangle: Acute and Scalene Triangle

• Red Triangle: Right and Scalene Triangle

• Blue Triangle: Obtuse and Scalene