Why did modern painters begin to explore abstraction?

Modern painters began to explore abstraction as a way to reject traditional academic conventions and reflect the rapidly changing social, material, and intellectual conditions of the modern era. By the mid-19th century, the rise of photography and other photomechanical techniques meant that painting was no longer the sole means of accurately recording the visual world. This shift liberated artists from the obligation to serve as documentarians, allowing them to explore the aesthetic potential of basic visual elements—such as line, color, tone, and composition—in a nonrepresentational context.1

Furthermore, movements like Romanticism had already begun to challenge the classicist emphasis on imitation, instead highlighting the role of imagination and the unconscious. Post-Impressionist artists furthered this by prioritizing personal, subjective visions over indifferent objectivity. As Maurice Denis famously noted in 1890, a painting is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order, a sentiment that paved the way for the 20th-century movements—such as Fauvism, Cubism, and Expressionism—that emphasized the gap between art and natural appearances.213