Abstraction comes from the Latin abstract and is linked to the verb abstract which means to separate in isolation in the mind the characteristics of an object or a fact, ceasing to pay attention to the sensible world to focus only on thought.
According to mathematics, abstraction is the intellectual process through which we mentally separate the particular qualities of various objects to fixate only on one or more common characteristics. It is through rigor that this mental operation called simple generalization is achieved.
Within mathematics there are abstract concepts, since they are the product of abstractions. Some of these concepts are: volume, surface, mass, material, number, length, weight, among others.
For philosophy, abstraction is an intellectual operation where what is inseparable in reality is separated. Abstraction is the previous one, to the instrument of generalization, since one cannot imagine general knowledge without eliminating the individual, that is, without abstracting. For this reason, every generalized idea is abstract and possesses only intelligible, not concrete reality.
Within art, abstraction is an artistic style created in mid-1910, as a response to realism and supported by the appearance of photography that caused a crisis in figurative art, this being one of the most significant manifestations of 20th century art.. It designates at the same time, two different forms of non-figurative art. Accentuating the chromatic, formal and structural aspects, highlighting its value and expressive force, without trying to imitate models or natural forms.
