An art movement with a strong emphasis on abstraction. Theo van Doesburg, closely associated with the De Stijl art movement, coined the term 'concrete art' when he founded the group Art Concret and articulated its features in a manifesto in 1930. The manifesto explained that the resultant art should be non-referential insofar as its components should not refer to, or allude to, the entities normally encountered in the natural, visible world - as distinct from abstraction generally which could include the abstraction of forms in nature. Concrete art was intended to emanate directly from the mind and consequently to be more 'cerebral'. Concrete art is often composed of basic visual features such as planes, colours and geometric forms and tends to be devoid of any sentiment or emotion or even any manifestation of the artist's personality.

The term was popularised by Josef Albers, and the artist Max Bill further promoted the ideas associated with concrete art, organising the first international exhibition in 1944. The movement came to fruition in Northern Italy and France in the 1940s and 1950s.

Other artists whose names are often associated with Concretism include Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, although there is clearly much overlap between Concretism and other art styles such as Modernism, Abstractionism, Neo-Plasticism and Op Art.