Many artists have claimed responsibility for creating the first piece of abstract art, given the "non-representational" and “non-objective" subject matter of the work. Between November 1906 and March 1907, Hilma af Klint created a series of abstract paintings, "Primordial Chaos". In 1909, Francis Picabia painted "Caoutchouc". A year later, Wassily Kandinsky signed "1910" to one of his abstract watercolors, "Composition VII", although many researchers believe that the work was actually created in 1913; Kandinsky may have backdated his work to claim credit for being the first abstract artist in modern art history unaware of af Klint and Picabia's works.

The first Black artist to be recognized for creating an abstract work is just as interesting; the challenge with the abstract work associated with black artists is that "it did not announce itself as Black art." Black abstract artists faced all of the same aesthetic, intellectual, and value questions that other abstract artists faced and also had to confront individual and institutional biases regarding content as it related to black abstract signals and symbols. Lowery Stokes Sims, the former president of Studio Museum in Harlem and the first Black curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, proposed that abstraction originated from African art, and that Black artists are claiming their birthright through abstraction.

The glaring omission of Black artists is evident throughout American art history. Many black artists felt marginalized in the white-dominated art world. Museum leaders and gallery owners were rarely interested in the work of Black artists. In the 1700s and 1800s, Black artists created work that did not reflect “the Black experience" in their subject matter; they painted portraits of white families and sweeping landscapes of white owned lands as a way to make money as an artist, which could be interpreted as the “Black experience” for artists during this period. Black artists played a pivotal role in the growth of contemporary art of the 1920s to 1940s, yet they existed on the outskirts of the art world in the United States. During the mid-20th century, several Black artists created nonrepresentational and abstract work, including Robert Blackburn, Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Fred Eversley, Norman Lewis, Tom Lloyd, during the Abstract Expressionism movement. Since the 1950s, the understanding and presenting of abstract work by Black artists has been a major movement in African American and American art history. By the 1970s, the American art world was evenly split between Black artists who created representational and political work, and artists who investigated "abstract strategies."

Howardena Pindell and her abstractions were rejected by the Studio Museum in Harlem, encouraging her to "go downtown and show with the white boys", and scolded for making work t…

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• African Modernism in America
• AfriCOBRA (African Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists)
• Art Workers’ Coalition
• Black Artists Group
• Black Artists in the Museum
• Black Arts Movement
• Black Emergency Cultural Coalition
• Black primitivism
• Committee for the Negro in the Arts (1947–1954)
• Federal Art Project
• Harlem Artists Guild
• Hurufiyya movement
• Irascibles
• Organization of Black American Culture
• Post-black art
• Spiral Group
• Washington Color School
• Weusi Artist Collective
• Where We At

The following list represents significant black artists who produced abstract work at some point in their careers. Many artists reject being labeled or categorized and express their creative development by moving to and from different mediums. These artists and many of their works would be considered contributions to the Black Abstractionism canon.
• Charles Alston
• Candida Alvarez
• Emma Amos
• Ellsworth Augustus Ausby
• Rushern Baker IV
• Ranti Bam
• Jean-Michel Basquiat
• Romare Bearden
• Kevin Beasley
• John T. Biggers
• McArthur Binion
• Robert Blackburn
• Betty Blayton-Taylor
• Lula Mae Blocton
• Skunder Boghossian
• Chakaia Booker
• Frank Bowling
• Mark Bradford
• Peter Bradley
• Moe Brooker
• Samuel Joseph Brown
• Vivian E. Browne
• Beverly Buchanan
• Lilian T. Burwell
• Yvonne Pickering Carter
• Barbara Chase-Riboud
• Ed Clark
• Robert Colescott
• Bethany Collins
• Houston Conwill
• Eldzier Cortor
• Adger Cowans
• Ralston Crawford
• Emilio Cruz
• Deborah Dancy
• Richard W. Dempsey
• Thornton Dial

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