Take a break from the holiday rush to enjoy some of the art world’s greats at Paths to the Absolute, currently on view at New York’s Di Donna gallery. The show offers a tightly edited look at the early days of abstract painting: its seminal period in Europe led by Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian as well as its rise on the other side of the Atlantic, during the post–World War II era, with Americans Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. The two groups shared similarities — and many differences, too — but as Mark Rosenthal writes in an essay in the accompanying catalogue, for both, “Individual freedom, both personal and political, was considered at risk and in need of protection and expression. Constraints of any kind — stylistic and otherwise — were anathema, and thus abstraction was a clear sign of freedom of expression…. Both generations expressed a similar enthusiasm for the power and profundity of art in general.” Check it out for yourself at Di Donna, before the show ends on December 3rd, or take in a few of these art history milestones in the slideshow above.