This painting, "City Dynamism" by Giacomo Ballia immediately caught my eyes in the abstract section for its beautiful composition. First I didn't really understand the painting at all, and had no idea what it had to do with cities as suggested in its name. I saw flowers and what seemed to be a river in the back. As I digested what was in front of me, I saw foliage, with each of the abstract "pointy" elements to be leaves, and an fern in the middle. Behind it was blocks, I presume buildings, with a river or road running through and turning perpendicularly. Then I saw what appeared to be handrails and a bridge around the top and a fallen log in the front. I believe what the painting is portraying is a foreground of nature, different types of plants and elements belonging to a forest. And this frames what seem to be the contrasting man-made city, with rigid shapes and patterns. So the longer I looked at it, I saw more depth, and meaning. 

Looking at the two types of paintings, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. For realistic paintings, I get dragged into a the small details, that even though I had a glance at the composition, I didn't really understand it at first. So through time, as I was able to connect the finer points of the painting, I was able to see the bigger picture and understand what it is depicting more clearly. The abstract painting on the other hand, since I didn't know what was really going on at first, I was drawn to the composition, coloring, and proportions. And as opposed to the realistic painting where the closer I look, the more two dimension it seemed, the abstract painting showed more depth as you focus in. And so to understand the picture you had to focus on smaller elements.