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Shape - AQAGeometric shapes

Shapes are two-dimensional. Positive shapes represent solid objects and negative shapes show the surrounding space. Geometric shapes are perfect and regular. Organic shapes are irregular and natural.

Part of Art and DesignElements of Art

Geometric shapes

Geometric shapes are mathematical shapes. They have straight lines, angles and points and curves

Geometric shapes include circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, hexagons etc.

Artists will sometimes use geometric shapes in their artwork to suggest balance and order or to highlight that something is man-made or artificial.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian, 1942-43, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian, 1942-43, oil on canvas

Piet Mondrian鈥檚 painting Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), uses the geometric shapes of squares and rectangles to represent the busy grid of streets in Manhattan, New York.

The simple shapes have been laid out in a way that makes them look like a birds-eye view of roads, traffic and buildings. There are no organic, natural shapes. This completely geometric image suggests a modern, man-made city.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian, 1942-43, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian, 1942-43, oil on canvas
Woman in Hat and Fur Collar, Pablo Picasso, 1937, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Woman in Hat and Fur Collar, Pablo Picasso, 1937, oil on canvas

In Woman in Hat and Fur Collar, Pablo Picasso has deliberately added angles and points to the organic shapes that would normally be found in the human face.

Simplifying natural shapes and representing them in a geometric way such as this was common with the movement of the early 20th Century.

Woman in Hat and Fur Collar, Pablo Picasso, 1937, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Woman in Hat and Fur Collar, Pablo Picasso, 1937, oil on canvas
Several Circles, Vasily Kandinsky, 1926, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Several Circles, Wassily Kandinsky, 1926, oil on canvas

This Kandinsky painting is entirely based on perfect circles but they are arranged in a seemingly random composition.

The individual elements may be geometric shapes, but the way they are used seems organic.

Several Circles, Vasily Kandinsky, 1926, oil on canvas
Image caption,
Several Circles, Wassily Kandinsky, 1926, oil on canvas