Pattern in art is the repetition of visual elements across a surface. From Islamic tessellations to Op Art, learn how pattern works and why it matters.
The Alhambra in Granada, Spain, is covered in pattern. Every wall, every arch, every ceiling is adorned with interlocking geometric designs that repeat, rotate, and reflect across the surfaces. In 2024, researchers confirmed what mathematicians had suspected for decades: the Alhambra's patterns contain examples of all 17 possible wallpaper symmetry groups, the mathematical classification of two-dimensional repeating patterns. The 14th-century Islamic artisans who decorated the Alhambra did not know group theory. They knew pattern. They explored every possible way that a two-dimensional surface can be covered with repeating forms, and they did it with stone, tile, and plaster.
Pattern is both an element of art and a principle of design. As an element, pattern is a visible feature of an artwork's surface, like color or texture. As a principle, pattern is a strategy: the artist uses repetition deliberately to create rhythm, visual flow, or structural order. Pattern is made by repeating or echoing the visual elements of an artwork, and it is one of the most ancient and universal tools in the visual arts.
This entry covers what pattern is, the different types of pattern, how artists have used pattern throughout history, and how to recognize pattern when you look at a work of art.
Pattern is the repetition of visual elements across a surface. Those elements can be lines, shapes, colors, textures, or any combination. The starting point of any pattern is the motif, the single element that will be repeated. A motif can be a geometric shape, an organic form, a color, or a combination of elements. The way the motif is repeated determines the type of pattern.
Patterns fall into two broad categories. Natural patterns are found in the world: the spiral of a nautilus shell, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the branching of a river delta, the stripes of a zebra. Man-made patterns are created by artists and designers: the grid of a checkerboard, the floral repeat of a wallpaper, the tessellated tiles of a mosque.
Within these categories, patterns can be regular or irregular, geometric or organic, structural or decorative, repeating or random. A regular pattern repeats the motif at fixed intervals. An irregular pattern varies the spacing, size, or orientation of the motif. A structural pattern organizes the composition itself, as in the grid of a Mondrian painting. A decorative pattern adorns a surface without determining its structure, as in the floral borders of an illuminated manuscript.
The distinction between pattern and repetition is one of degree. Repetition can be less structured than pattern. Pattern implies a regular, predictable system. Repetition can be looser and more improvisational. Both can create rhythm, the visual tempo set by repeating elements. The arches and columns of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, spaced evenly and striped with alternating colors, create an even, measured rhythm. Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950) creates a loose, syncopated rhythm through dripped lines that repeat without regularity, like jazz improvisation.
Pattern is one of the oldest forms of visual expression. The earliest known decorative patterns date to the Paleolithic period. Pottery from the Jomon period in Japan (c. 14,000-300 BCE) is covered with impressed cord patterns, the simplest form of repetition: a mark made by pressing a rope into wet clay, again and again, around the vessel.
Islamic art made pattern its central principle. Because Islamic theology discouraged the representation of living beings in religious contexts, Islamic artists developed geometric pattern to a level of sophistication unmatched in any other tradition. The Great Mosque of Damascus (715 CE), the Alhambra in Granada (13th-14th century), and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691 CE) are covered in patterns that use interlocking geometry, star polygons, and tessellations. These patterns are not decorative afterthoughts. They are the primary visual content of the buildings, and they communicate ideas about infinity, unity, and the nature of God through mathematical repetition.
Byzantine mosaic traditions also relied heavily on pattern. Gold tesserae arranged in repeated formations created shimmering backgrounds that influenced European decorative painting for generations. These mosaics directly inspired Gustav Klimt's (1862-1918) Golden Phase. Klimt's The Kiss (1907-1908) uses patterns of gold leaf and geometric shapes to cover the bodies of the embracing couple, turning the figures into living patterns. The rectangular shapes on the male figure and the circular shapes on the female figure use pattern to communicate gender through visual convention.
The Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century made pattern a political statement. William Morris (1834-1896) advocated for the revival of traditional craft techniques and the study of nature as the source of all design. His wallpaper and textile designs, including the famous Acanthus pattern (1875), use organic motifs derived from nature, repeated in complex arrangements that hide the geometric structure of the repeat. Morris believed that pattern should bring nature into the home as an antidote to the graceless production of the Industrial Revolution. His designs are still manufactured today.
The 20th century transformed pattern from decoration into subject matter. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) built entire compositions from grids of rectangles and primary colors. His work with the De Stijl movement turned geometric pattern into the painting itself, not decoration on top of it. Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937-42) is a pattern, but it is also a philosophy: the reduction of art to its fundamental structural elements.
Op Art made pattern the entire subject of the painting. Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) and Bridget Riley (b. 1932) built paintings from nothing but repeated geometric elements, exploiting how pattern interacts with human visual perception to create movement and optical illusions on flat surfaces. Riley's black-and-white compositions from the 1960s, including Movement in Squares (1961), created such powerful optical effects that viewers at the Museum of Modern Art's 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye reported feeling physically unsteady. Riley was the first woman to win the painting prize at the Venice Biennale in 1968.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) used pattern as a commentary on mass production and celebrity. His Marilyn Diptych (1962) repeats the face of Marilyn Monroe fifty times, using silkscreen to create a grid of identical images with slight variations in color and registration. The repetition is the content. It comments on the commodification of identity and the way mass media turns individuals into patterns.
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) has made pattern the obsessive subject of a six-decade career. Her dot is a motif. Her repetition of that dot across every surface, including canvases, rooms, and her own body, is pattern. Her Infinity Nets series, begun in 1959, consists of paintings covered in repeated, looping arcs that create a sense of endless continuation. In 2022, one of her Infinity Nets paintings sold for $10.5 million at Phillips New York, setting her auction record and proving the market value of pattern-driven work.
The anonymous Islamic artisans who decorated the Alhambra produced the most comprehensive exploration of two-dimensional pattern in history. The tiles, stucco carvings, and wooden ceilings contain examples of all 17 wallpaper symmetry groups, a mathematical classification of repeating patterns that was not formalized until the late 19th century. The Alhambra patterns use translation, rotation, reflection, and glide reflection to cover surfaces with designs that appear to extend infinitely.
Morris elevated pattern design to fine art. His wallpaper and textile patterns, including Willow Bough (1887) and Strawberry Thief (1883), use motifs derived from nature, arranged in complex repeats that conceal their underlying geometry. Morris advocated "diligent study of Nature and secondly, study of the work of the ages of Art," and his patterns combine botanical accuracy with medieval-inspired decorative structure.
Klimt's Golden Phase paintings use pattern to dissolve the boundary between figure and decoration. The Kiss (1907-1908) and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) cover the subjects in patterns of gold leaf, geometric shapes, and symbolic motifs. The patterns are not backgrounds. They are the substance of the image, drawing on Byzantine mosaic traditions to create a surface where figure and pattern are indistinguishable.
Riley's Op Art paintings use pattern as a perceptual tool. By manipulating the spacing, curvature, and thickness of repeated geometric elements, she creates illusions of movement, depth, and vibration. Current (1964) uses wavy lines that repeat across the canvas, creating the impression of a surface in motion. Riley's work proves that pattern is not just decorative. It is a tool for investigating how the visual system processes repeated information.
Kusama's obsessive repetition of dots and nets across paintings, sculptures, and installations has made pattern the defining feature of her career. Her Infinity Mirror Rooms, beginning in 1965, use repeated lights and forms reflected in mirrors to create the experience of infinite pattern. The work demonstrates that pattern, taken to its logical extreme, becomes a meditation on infinity and the self.
Start by identifying the motif. What is being repeated? It may be a shape, a line, a color, or a combination. The motif is the basic unit of the pattern, and identifying it is the first step to understanding how the pattern works.
Next, determine the type of repetition. Is the pattern regular or irregular? Geometric or organic? Structural or decorative? A regular geometric pattern creates order and stability. An irregular organic pattern creates movement and energy. A structural pattern organizes the composition. A decorative pattern adorns it.
Finally, consider the rhythm. Rhythm is the visual tempo created by the repetition. Even, regular repetition creates a steady rhythm, like a march. Varied repetition creates a syncopated rhythm, like jazz. The rhythm of a pattern affects the viewer's body: regular patterns can be calming, while irregular patterns can be unsettling or exciting.
Pattern is built from and connected to several other elements of art. Line is the most basic element that can be repeated to create pattern. Shape is the most common motif in pattern design. Color can be repeated to create pattern through alternating hues. Texture can be created by repeating small patterns of marks. Mosaic is a technique that inherently produces pattern through the repetition of tesserae. For more on how pattern functions in composition, read our post on reading a painting, or explore our guide to texture in art.
Take a piece of paper and draw a single simple shape: a circle, a triangle, or a leaf. Repeat it across the page in a regular grid. Then repeat it again in a different arrangement: rotated, overlapping, varying in size. Then repeat it a third time, breaking the regularity entirely and placing each instance wherever feels right. Three patterns from the same motif, three completely different effects. The exercise teaches that pattern is not the motif. Pattern is the arrangement. For more exercises, read our guide to drawing fundamentals and our post on texture in art.
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