Important Art Movements To Remember

What is an Art Movement ?

Art Movements are the collective titles that are given to artworks which
share the same artistic ideals, style, technical approach or timeframe.
There is no fixed rule that determines what constitutes an art movement.
The artists associated with one movement may adhere to strict guiding
principles, whereas those who belong to another may have little in
common.
Art Movements are simply a historical convenience for grouping
together artists of a certain period or style so that they may be
understood within a specific context.
Art Movements are usually named retrospectively by art critics or
historians and their titles are often witty or sarcastic nicknames pulled
from a bad review.
Grouping artists of similar interests or styles into Art Movements is
mainly a characteristic of Western Art.
Art Movements are essentially a 20th century development when there
was a greater variety of styles than at any other period in the history of
art.
20th century
1900–1921
Wassily Kandinsky, 1903, Der Blaue Reiter 21.1 cm × 54.6 cm (8.3 in
× 21.5 in) Bauhaus

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Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905, Picasso's Rose Period

Henri Matisse 1905, Fauvism

Pablo Picasso 1907, Proto-Cubism



Georges Braque 1910, Analytic Cubism

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Kazimir Malevich, (Supremus No. 58), Museum of Art,

1916, Suprematism

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain,1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, Dada

 Albert Gleizes, Woman with Black Glove, 1920, Crystal Cubism

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Piet Mondrian, Tableau I, 1921, De Stijl

1920–1945


Theo van Doesburg, Composition XX, 1920, De Stijl

Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes (1921), Tate, Surrealism

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Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928, Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Precisionism

Grant Wood, American Gothic,1930, Social Realism

The Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance Art

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Italian Renaissance Art

Naturalism

Italian Renaissance Art

Humanism

Italian Renaissance Art

Fresco Painting

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Italian Renaissance Art

Tempera Painting

Italian Renaissance Art

Oil Painting

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Modern Art Movements

Impressionism

Post-Impressionism

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Cubism

Fauvism

Expressionism

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 Important Art Movements To Remember

Dadaism

Surrealism

Pop Art

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'The Persistence of Memory' (1937) by Salvador Dali

25 art styles/ movements

 Abstract Expressionism
 Art Noveau
 Avant-garde
 Baroque
 Classicism

 Conceptual Art
 Constructivism
 Cubism
 Dada / Dadaism
 Expressionism

 Fauvism
 Futurism
 Impressionism
 Installation Art
 Land Art / Earth Art

 Minimalism
 Neo-Impressionalism
 Neo-Classicism
 Performance Art
 Pointillism

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 Pop Art
 Post-Impressionism
 Rococo
 Surrealism
 Suprematism

Abstract Expressionism

The designation Abstract Expressionism encompasses a wide variety of

postwar American painting, usually characterized by large abstract painted
canvases. Also known as The New York School, the movement includes
sculpture and other media as well. The term Action painting is associated
with Abstract Expressionism, describing a direct and highly dynamic kind of
art that involves the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping
brushstrokes and the effects of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas.

Art Nouveau

A decorative style that flourished between 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the U.S. Art
Nouveau, also called Jugendstil (Germany) and Sezessionstil (Austria), is characterized by
sinuous, asymmetrical lines based on organic forms. Although it influenced painting and
sculpture, its chief manifestations were in architecture and the decorative and graphic arts,
aiming to create a new style, free of the imitativ historicism that dominated much of 19th
century art and design.

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Avant-garde

In French, avant-garde means “advanced guard” and refers to innovative or experimental

concepts, works or the group or people producing them, particularly in the realms of culture,
politics, and the arts.

Baroque

The term Baroque, derived from the Portugese ‘barocco’ meaning ‘irregular pearl or stone’, is a
style in art and architecture developed in Europe from the early seventeenth to mid-eighteenth
century. Baroque emphasizes dramatic, exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to
produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur.

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Classicism

The principles embodied in the styles, theories, or philosophies of the art of ancient Greece and
Rome, concentrating on traditional forms with a focus on elegance and symmetry.

Conceptual art

Conceptual art, sometimes simply called conceptualism, emerged in the late 1960s, emphasizing
ideas and theoretical practices rather than the creation of visual forms. The term was coined in
1967 by the artist Sol LeWitt, who gave the new genre its name in his essay “Paragraphs on
Conceptual Art,” in which he wrote, “The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work
of art as any finished product.”

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Constructivism

Developed by the Russian avant-garde around 1915, constructivism is a branch of abstract art,
rejecting the idea of “art for art’s sake” in favor of art as a practice directed towards social
purposes. The movement’s work was mostly geometric and accurately composed, sometimes
through mathematics and measuring tools.

Cubism

An artistic movement begun in 1907 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque who
developed a visual language whose geometric planes challenged the conventions of
representation in painting, by reinventing traditional subjects such as nudes, landscapes, and still
lifes as increasingly fragmented compositions.

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Dada / Dadaism

An artistic and literary movement formed during the First World War as a negative response to
the traditional social values and conventional artistic practices of the time. Dada artists
represented a protest movement with an anti-establishment manifesto, sought to expose accepted
and often repressive conventions of order and logic by shocking people into self-awareness.

Expressionism

An international artistic movement in art, architecture, literature, and performance that

flourished between 1905 and 1920, especially in Germany and Austria, that sought to express the
meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Conventions of expressionist style
include distortion, exaggeration, fantasy, and vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of
color in order to express the artist’s inner feelings or ideas.

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Fauvism

Coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, Fauvism (French for “wild beasts”) is a style of painting
produced by a group of artists in the early 20th century. Fauvism is associated especially with
Henri Matisse and André Derain, whose works are characterized by strong, vibrant color and
bold brushstrokes over realistic or representational qualities.

Futurism

An Italian movement in art and literature, founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,
aiming to capture the dynamism, speed and energy of the modern mechanical world.

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Impressionism

A 19th-century art movement, associated especially with French artists such as Claude Monet,
Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, who attempted to accurately and
objectively record visual ‘impressions’ by using small, thin, visible brushstrokes that coalesce to
form a single scene and emphasize movement and the changing qualities of light. Being anti-
academic in its formal aspects, the impressionists responded to traditions that had recently
excluded them from the government-sponsored annual exhibitions called Salons by creating
independent exhibitions outside of the established venues of the day.

Installation art

A form of art, developed in the late 1950s, which is characterized by large-scale, mixed-media
constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time. Often,
installation art involves the creation of an enveloping aesthetic or sensory experience in a
particular environment, often inviting active engagement or immersion by the spectator.

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Land art / Earth art

Land art, also known as Earth art, Environmental art and Earthworks, is an art movement that
emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by works made directly in the landscape,
sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural
materials such as rocks or twigs. Land art is largely associated with Great Britain and the United
States, but includes examples from many countries.

Minimalism

An artistic movement developed in the 1960s and typified by works composed of simple
geometric shapes devoid of representational content. The minimal vocabulary of forms made
from humble industrial materials challenged traditional notions of craftsmanship, the illusion of
spatial depth in painting, and the idea that a work of art must be one of a kind.

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Neo-Impressionism

A term applied to an avant-garde art movement that flourished principally in France from 1886
to 1906. Led by the example of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, the Neo-Impressionists
renounced the spontaneity of Impressionism in favor of a measured and systematic painting
technique grounded in science and the study of optics.

Neoclassicism

A style that arose in the second half of the eighteenth century in Europe, drawing inspiration
from the classical art and culture of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

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Performance art

A term that emerged in the 1960s to describe artworks that are created through actions
performed by the artist or other participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or
scripted. Performance challenges the conventions of traditional forms of visual art such as
painting and sculpture by embracing a variety of styles such as happenings, body art, actions,
and events.

Pointillism

A technique of painting developed by French painters Georges-Pierre Seurat and Paul Signac
characterized by works made of countless tiny dots of pure color applied in patterns to form an
image.

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Pop art

A movement that emerged in the 1950s, composed of British and American artists, who draw
inspiration from ‘popular’ imagery and products from popular and commercial culture, opposed
to ‘elitist’ fine art. Pop art reached its peak of activity in the 1960s, emphasizing the banal or
kitschy elements of everyday life in such forms as mechanically reproduced silkscreens, large-
scale facsimiles, and soft sculptures.

Post-Impressionism

A term coined in 1910 by the English art critic and painter Roger Fry to describe the reaction
against the naturalistic depiction of light and color in Impressionism. Led by Paul Cézanne, Paul
Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat, who all developed a personal, distinctive style,
were unified by their interest in expressing their emotional and psychological responses to the
world through bold colors and expressive, often symbolic images.

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Rococo

A style of art, particularly in architecture and decorative art, that originated in France in the early
1700s and is marked by elaborate ornamentation and a light, sensuous style, including scroll
work, foliage, and animal forms.

Surrealism

Founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in 1924, Surrealism was an artistic and literary
movement which was active through World War II. Surrealism’s goal was to liberate thought,
language, and human experience from the oppressive boundaries of rationalism by championing
the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary.

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Suprematism

A term coined by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1915 to describe an abstract style of
painting that conforms to his belief that art expressed in the simplest geometric forms and
dynamic compositions was superior to earlier forms of representational art, leading to the
“supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts.”

Top 10 Artists / Painters of all time

1. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Renaissance painter, scientist, inventor, and more. Da Vinci
is one of most famous painters in the world for his iconic Mona Lisa and Last Supper.

2. Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890). Dutch post-impressionist painter.

Famous paintings include; Sunflowers, The Starry night, and Cafe Terrace at Night.

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3. Rembrandt (1606–1669) Dutch Master. One of the greatest painters, admired for his vivid
realism.

Famous paintings include The Jewish Bride and The Storm of the Sea of Galilee.

4. Michelangelo (1475–1564) Renaissance sculptor, painter and architect.

Famous paintings include his epic ceiling mural on the Sistine Chapel.

5. Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter. ; Famous paintings

include Waterlilies, Women in Garden, and Impression Sunrise.

6. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish, modern ‘cubist’ painter.

Famous works include Guernica and Bird of Peace.

7. Raphael (1483–1520) Italian painter. Raphael, da Vinci and Michelangelo make up the high
Renaissance trinity.

Famous paintings include Mond Crucifixion and The Wedding of the Virgin.

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8. August Renoir (1841–1919) French painter, one of the early pioneers of impressionism. Also
influenced by Italian renaissance.

Famous works include Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and On the Terrace.

9. Jan Vermeer (1632–1675) Dutch painter who specialised in genre painting – vivid depictions
of still life.

Famous paintings include :

View of Delft, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and The Milkmaid.

10. Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) French post-impressionist painter.

Famous paintings include:

The Card Players and Still Life with a Curtain.

More Art And Artists

Henri Matisse

No artist is as closely tied to the sensual pleasures of color as Henri Matisse. His work was all
about sinuous curves rooted in the traditions of figurative art, and was always focused on the
beguiling pleasures of pigment and hue. “I am not a revolutionary by principle,” he once said.
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing
subject matter…a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair.”

Famous Works: Woman with a hat, Woman reading

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Jackson Pollock

Hampered by alcoholism, self-doubt and clumsiness as a conventional painter, Pollock

transcended his limitations in a brief but incandescent period between 1947 and 1950 when he
produced the drip abstractions that cemented his renown. Eschewing the easel to lay his
canvases fait on the floor, he used house paint straight from the can, flinging and dribbling thin
skeins of pigment that left behind a concrete record of his movements—a technique that would
become known as action painting.

Works : Abstract Expressionism- Autumn rhythm, blue poles

Edvard Munch

I scream, you scream we all scream for Munch’s The Scream, the Mona Lisa of anxiety. In
2012, a pastel version of Edvard Munch’s iconic evocation of modern angst fetched a then-
astronomical price of $120 million at auction (a benchmark which has since been bested several
times). Munch’s career was more than just a single painting. He’s generally acknowledged as the
precursor to Expressionism, influencing artists such 20th-century artists as Egon Schiele, Erich
Heckel and Max Beckmann.

Famous work – The Scream

Gustav Klimt

The fin de siècle Viennese Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt is know for using gold leaf,
something he picked up on while visiting the famous Byzantine frescoes in Ravenna Italy. He
most famously put the idea to use in his masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I—also
know as Austria’s Mona Lisa—a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. The story of
its eventual return to its rightful owner served as the basis of the film, Woman In Gold, starring
Helen Mirren. Another Klimt painting, The Kiss, is equally iconic.

Famous Work : The tree of life , The Kiss

Salvador Dalí

Dalí was effectively Warhol before there was a Warhol. Like Andy, Dalí courted celebrity
almost as an adjunct to his work. With their melting watches and eerie blasted landscapes, Dalí’s
paintings were the epitome of Surrealism, and he cultivated an equally outlandish appearance,
wearing a long waxed mustache that resembled cat whiskers. Ever the consummate showman,
Dalí once declared, “I am not strange. I am just not normal.”

Works: The Persistence of Memory, Galatea of the Spheres and The Great Masturbator.
Salvador Dali. The Burning Giraffe (1937) Tuna Fishing (1967) The Dream Caused by the
Flight of a Bee (1944) Galatea of the Spheres (1952) Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)

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Andy Warhol

Technically, Warhol didn’t invent Pop Art, but he became the Pope of Pop by taking the style
out of the art world and bringing it into the world of fashion and celebrity. Starting out as a
commercial artist, he brought the ethos of advertising into fine art, even going so far as to say,
“Making money is art.” Such sentiments blew away the existential pretensions of Abstract
Expressionism. Although he’s famous for subjects such as Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn Monroe
and Elvis Presley, his greatest creation was himself.

Frida Kahlo

The Mexican artist and feminist icon was a performance artist of paint, using the medium to lay
bare her vulnerabilities while also constructing a persona of herself as an embodiment of
Mexico’s cultural heritage. Her most famous works are the many surrealistic self-portraits in
which she maintains a regal bearing even as she casts herself as a martyr to personal and
physical suffering—anguishes rooted in a life of misfortunes that included contracting polio as a
child, suffering a catastrophic injury as a teenager, and enduring a tumultuous marriage to fellow
artist Diego Rivaera.

Top Twenty Paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926) in chronological

order:
1. 'The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse', 1866.
2. 'Women in the Garden', 1866-67.
3. 'Bathers at La Grenouillère', 1869
4. 'Impression Sunrise', 1872.
5. 'Regatta at Argenteuil', 1872.
6. 'Wild Poppies', 1873.
7. 'Woman with a Parasol: Madame Monet and Her Son' 1875
8. 'La Gare St. Lazare', 1877.
9. 'La Rue Saint-Denis: Celebration of June 30', 1878.
10. 'Bordighera', 1884.
11. 'The Manneporte near Étretat', 1886.
12. 'Haystacks: White Frost Sunrise', 1889.
13. 'Poplars', 1891.
14. 'Rouen Cathedral', 1893.
15. 'The Water Lily Pond: Green Harmony', 1899.
16. 'Irises in Monet's Garden', 1900.
17. 'Houses of Parliament: Sunset', 1904.
18. 'The Doge's Palace, Venice', 1908.
19. 'Water Lilies', 1919.
20. 'Water Lilies - The Clouds': Musée de l'Orangerie, 1914-26

Top Twenty Paintings by Rembrandt (1606-1669) in chronological order:

1. 'The Artist in his Studio', 1628 (oil on canvas)

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2. 'Self Portrait' 1628/29 (oil on panel)

3. 'An Old Man in Military Costume', c.1631 (oil on panel)
4. 'Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts', 1631 (oil on panel)
5. 'The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp', 1632 (oil on canvas)
6. 'Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee', 1633 (oil on canvas)
7. 'Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume', 1635 (oil on canvas)
8. 'Rembrandt and Saskia in the Parable of the Prodigal Son', c.1637 (oil on canvas)
9. 'The Night Watch', 1642 (oil on canvas)
10. 'The Mill', 1645/48 (oil on canvas)
11. 'The Rest on The Flight into Egypt', 1647 (oil on panel)
12. 'Aristotle with a Bust of Homer' 1653 (oil on canvas)
13. 'Woman Bathing in a Stream', 1654 (oil on panel)
14. 'The Slaughtered Ox', 1655 (oil on canvas)
15. 'Self Portrait as the Apostle Paul', 1661 (oil on canvas)
16. 'Portrait of Margarethe de Geer, Wife of Jacob Trip', 1661 (oil on canvas)
17. 'Portrait of the Artist', 1665 (oil on canvas)
18. 'The Return of the Prodigal Son', c.1667 (oil on canvas)
19. 'The Jewish Bride', 1667 (oil on canvas)
20. 'Self Portrait', 1669 (oil on canvas)

FEW MORE MOVEMENTS

Futurism

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989, 1990.38.3, www.metmuseum.org

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Perhaps one of the most controversial movements of the Modernist era was Futurism,
which, at a cursory glance, likened humans to machines and vice versa in order to
embrace change, speed, and innovation in society while discarding artistic and
cultural forms and traditions of the past. However, at the center of the Futurist
platform was an endorsement of war and misogyny. Futurism—coined in a 1909
manifesto by Filippo Marinetti—was not limited to just one art form, but in fact was
embraced by sculptors, architects, painters, and writers. Paintings were typically of
automobiles, trains, animals, dancers, and large crowds; and painters borrowed the
fragmented and intersecting planes from Cubism in combination with the vibrant and
expressive colors of Fauvism in order to glorify the virtues of speed and dynamic
movement. Writers focused on ridding their poetry of what they saw as unnecessary
elements such as adjectives and adverbs so that the emphasis could rest on the action
of infinitive verbs. This technique in conjunction with the integration of mathematical
symbols allowed them to make more declarative statements with a great sense of
audacity. Although originally ardent in their affirmation of the virtues of war, the
Futurists lost steam as the devastation of WWI became realized.

Vorticism

Public Domain

A specifically English artistic movement, since its mouthpiece was the famed
London-based magazine Blast, Vorticism followed in the same vein as Futurism in
that it relished in the innovative advances of the machine age and embraced the
possible virtues of dynamic change that were to follow. It was founded right before
the start of WWI by the celebrated painter Wyndham Lewis and the ubiquitous poet
of the Modernist period Ezra Pound. However, whereas the Futurists originated in
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France and Italy and then sprawled out over the continent to Russia, Vorticism
remained local in London. Vorticists prided themselves on being independent of
similar movements. In their literature, they utilized bare-bones vocabulary that
resonated in likeness to the mechanical forms found in English shipyards and
factories, and, in their writings as well as their paintings, Vorticists espoused
abstraction as the only way to sever ties with the dominant and suffocating Victorian
past so that they could advance to a new era. However, Vorticism, like Futurism,
struggled to cope with the incomprehensible destruction during WWI that was a result
of the new machines which they so highly praised. As WWI came to an end and
valued Vorticists, namely T.E. Hulme and Gaudler-Brzeska, died in action, Vorticism
shriveled to a small few by the beginning of the 1920s.
 Constructivism

© Tatlin; photograph © Moderna Museet, Stockholm

As Cubism and Futurism spread west to Russia at the end of the 1910s, they were
absorbed into the utopian spirit of the October Revolution, thus creating a new art
movement known as Constructivism, which embraced theory that art should be
“constructed” from modern industrial materials such as plastic, steel, and glass in
order to serve a societal purpose instead of merely making an abstract statement.
Often credited with serving as the impetus for the movement is Vladimir Tatlin, who
in 1913, while studying in Paris, was highly influenced by the geometric
constructions of Picasso. After migrating back to Russia, he, along with Antoine
Pevsner and Naum Gabo, published the Realist Manifesto in 1920, which, like the
Futurists and Vorticists, declared an admiration of machines and technology as well
as their functionalism. One of the most iconic artworks of this movement is
Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International (1919–20), a strangely spiral-shaped
structure that was intended to serve as a government building. Most Constructivists,
like Tatlin, thought painting to be a “dead” art form, unless it was to serve as a
blueprint for something to be physically built. Therefore, they worked mainly with

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ceramics, fashion design, graphics, and in architecture. As Soviet opposition to their

movement increased, many Constructivists fled from Russia and inspired the
movement is Western countries such as Germany, France, and England, where they
gained a great deal of significance.

Suprematism
Another uniquely Russian Modernist movement was Suprematism, started conjointly
with Constructivism, though with a stronger emphasis and embracement of the
abstraction capable by painting on a canvas. It is denoted as the first movement to
utilize pure geometrical abstraction in painting. Kazimir Malevich is viewed as its
founder, as he, along with the input of many of his contemporaries, authored the
Suprematist manifesto. The movement’s name originated from a quote of Malevich’s,
in which he stated that the movement would inspire the “supremacy of pure feeling or
perception in the pictorial arts.” His central goal was to break art down to its bare
bones, often employing basic shapes, such as squares, triangles, and circles, as well as
primary and neutral colors. As he progressed in his work, Malevich included more
colors and shapes, but he epitomized the movement in his “White on White” paintings
in which a faintly outlined square is just barely visible. Suprematism was often
imbued with spiritual and mystic undertones that added to its abstraction, and, as was
the case with Constructivism, the movement essentially came to complete end as
Soviet oppression increased.

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