SIMILARITIES BETWEEN ART AND NATURE. FROM KLEE TO INDEPENDENT GROUP

Structural similarities between natural and artistic forms could be easily justified: art, as it was defined in ancient times, is "imitation of nature". Not an imitation of what today we think is nature: forests, mountains, rivers, animals, etc, but imitation of the essential or ideal nature of things. After the microscope revealed the existence of structures different from the immediately visible forms, but as real as them, the arts could imitate them. Nevertheless, some artists thought that there might not be causal similarities, but significant, between natural and artificial (or artistic) forms. This possibility led to Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson and architects Alison and Peter Smithson to assemble the Parallel of Life and Art photo-exhibition. His intention was to discover, from analogies and parallels between different images, a "new landscape" where art meet again nature and technology. They wished expand the human field of vision beyond the limits imposed by previous generations. Common laws existence in nature and art shows that human being creations are also nature recreations. Surrealism and structuralism confirmed it. Apart from possible influences, parallels between Klee paintings and schemes made by the Smithsons are equally significant.