Paintings that depict real or imagined people and landscapes are known as figurative paintings. The Pola Museum of Art collection consists predominately of figurative art, including portraits, still lifes, and landscape paintings. In the 20th century, many painters experimented and explored more diverse possibilities apart from figurative art and moved in the direction of abstract art.

Abstract art might, for example, express the color, shape, or three-dimensionality of objects in an abstract manner. Through painting, an artist might try to bring order to personal emotional chaos, or to express the act of painting itself by emphasizing materials such as paint and canvas.

Numerous paintings have been created in an effort to explore and understand the nature of art and painting.
With the launch of Cubism by Picasso and Braque in 1907, geometric analysis and reconstruction liberated painting from figurative expression.

Cubism was a breakthrough that brought a trend of abstract painting to Japan as well.
This exhibition introduces abstract works from the Pola Museum of Art collection by Picasso and Braque and others, as well as newly acquired post-war abstract paintings by Onosato Toshinobu, Sugai Kumi, Domoto Hisao, and Yamada Masaaki.