Modern art



First act
The following table will allow to all the art world professionals and art lovers to make sense of the jargon in the artistic movements of modern art.

Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Nabis, Fauvism, Modern Style, Naive Art, Die Brücke, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Golden Section, Blaue Reiter, Orphism, Ready-made, Vorticism, Precisionism, all these artistic movements are chronologically presented here, with a short explanation of what it is and also the artists that can't be ignored for each movement. This guide will be very useful for every contemporary artist. And also for the collectors, galleries, critics and general public.



Artistic movements from 1900 to 1945 - Modern Art



Post- Impressionnism

1900-1903

Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Emile Bernard, Paul Cézanne

France. Simplification of the drawing. Space effects in aplats. Antinaturalist. Symbolic content.


Pointillism
Divisionnism

1900-1906

Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross



France. Technique of employing a point of colour to create the maximum colour intensity.


Nabis

1900

Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Chaïm Soutine, Félix Vallotton, Verkade, Ballin, Pierre Bonnard, Roussel

Means 'prophets'. Paris, Pont-Aven. Influenced by the teachings of Gauguin, the japanism and the Pont-Aven's School.


Fauvism

1900-1906

Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Maurice De Vlaminck

France. Use of pure colors. Simplification of forms and perspective.


Art Nouveau
Modern Style
Jugendstil

1900-1914

William Morris, Hector Guimard, Victor Horta, Hermann Obrist, Gustav Klimt, Mucha, Khnopff, Paul Ransont

Europe and United States. Decorative style in architecture, decorative and graphic arts, painting and sculpture. Characterized by sinuous, asymmetrical lines based on organic forms.


Naive Art

1900-1937

Le douanier Rousseau, le facteur Cheval, André Bouquet, Louis Vivin, Camille Bombois, André Bauchant

France. Self-taught artists. Colored expression of a popular sensibility. They don't imitate the artistic trends of their time.


Die Brücke

1905-1913

Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Means 'the bridge'. Germany. It's a group of expressionists artists. Characterized by the intensely emotional and violent imagery.


Expressionnism

1905-1920

Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Alexeï Von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, August Macke, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Chaim Soutine, Emil Filla, Béla Czobel, Edward Munch


Especially in Germany. Formal simplifications . Intensity of the graphic expression. Vigour of the touch. Deeply influenced by primitive arts.


Cubism

1908-1920

Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Alexandre Archipenko, Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Jean Metzinger

France. Influenced by the teachings of Cezanne and Negro-african art. Two phases. Analytic phase : use of several visual angles for a same object, Dissection on many multiple facets, limited range of colors. Synthetic phase: invention of collage and sticked paper.


Futurism

1909-1915

Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Ardengo Soffici

Italy and Russia. Literary movement in origin which includes after painting, sculpture, photography and architecture. Aesthetic generated by the modern myth of the machine and of speed. Painters are influenced by Divisionism and Cubism.


Section d'Or
Golden Section

1911-1914

Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Albert Gleizes, Frantisek Kupka, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Francis Picabia, Jacques Villon

Paris. Identified with Cubism. Will to give a scientific turn in the pictorial researches.


Blaue Reiter

1911-1914

Heinrich Campendonk, Lyonel Feininger, Alexeï von Jawlensky, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, August Macke, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter

Means 'Blue Rider'. Germany. Where aesthetic register meets fauvism, abstraction, primitivism and expressionism.

Orphism

1912-1914

Alice Bailly, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Frantisek Kupka, Francis Picabia, Jacques Villon

Paris. Roots in Cubism with a tendency towards an abstract construction of forms with color.

Ready-made

1913-1921

Marcel Duchamp

New-York. Product of modern mass production which become an artwork as the artist chooses.

Vorticism

1914-1917

David Bomberg, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Percy Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, Edward Wadsworth

England. Literature, painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography. Double influence of cubism and futurism. Art find its source in the vortex of emotions.

Precisionnism

1920-1930

Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe, Joseph Stella, Charles Demuth, Stuart Davis

United States. Precision of the images. Figurative painting sharply defined, with geometric forms and flat planes.



Second act

The following table will allow to all the art world professionals and art lovers to make sense of the jargon in the artistic movements of modern art.
Suprematism, Dada, Metaphysical Painting, De Stilj, Purism, New Objectivity, Neo-Plasticism, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Constructivism, Muralism, Productivism, Surrealism, Cercle et Carré, Concrete Art, Socialist Realism, all these artistic movements are chronologically presented here, with a short explanation of what it is and also the artists that can't be ignored for each movement. This guide will be very useful for every contemporary artist. And also for the collectors, galleries, critics and general public.




Suprematism

1915-1922

Kasimir Malevitch, Alexandra Exter, Ivan Vassilievitch Klioun, Lioubov Popova, Jean Pougny, Olga Rozanova, Alexandre Rodtchenko

Russia. Purely aesthetic and concerned
only with form, free from any political or social meaning. Purity of shape, particularly of the square. New realism in painting which implies the supremacy of this new art in relation to the past.


Dada

1916-1922

Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Marcel Janco, Man Ray, Francis Picabia, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp



Germany, France, United States. Provocation and derision during public events. Rejection of conventions in art and thought.


Metaphysical
Painting

1917-1925

Giorgio De Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Carlo D. Carrà

Italia. Characterized by a recognizable iconography: a fictive space was created in the painting, modelled on illusionistic one-point perspective but deliberately subverted.

De Stilj

1917-1932

Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, Theo Van Doesburg, Georges Vantongerloo

Germany. Means 'the style'. Characterized by the elementary components of the primary colours, flat, rectangular areas and only straight, horizontal and vertical lines.


Purism

1918-1926

Le Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant

France. Painting and architecture. In reaction to Cubist painting. Admiration for the beauty and purity of the form of the machine. Characterized by the geometrical simplicity of outlines and by the search for pure forms.


Neue Sachlichkeit
New Objectivity

1918-1933

Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Carl Grossberg, George Grosz, Carlo Mense, Christian Schad, Georg Scholz

Germany. Characterized by a realistic style combined with a cynical, socially critical, philosophical stance.


Neo-Plasticism

1919-1931

Piet Mondrian, Theo Van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietvelt, Georges Vantongerloo

Paris. Netherlands. Style of painting in which a grid, delineated by black lines, was filled with blocks of primary colour. Applied to all aspects of design.

Bauhaus

1919-1933

Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy



Germany. Integrates Expressionist art with the fields of design and architecture.


Art Deco

1920-1939

Maurice Dufrêne, Jean Dunand, Francis Jourdain, Pierre Legrain, Robert Mallet-Stevens, André Mare, Jacques Emile Ruhlmann, Louis Süe

France. Characterized by the straight line, the clear colors, the geometrical interpretation of the forms in nature and a tradition of elegance.


Constructivism

1921-1928

Naum Gabo, El Lissitzky, Antoine Pevsner, Lioubov Popova, Alexandre Rodtchenko, Vladimir Tatline, Kasimir Malevitch

Russia, Germany. Painting, sculpture, photography, literature, theatre and film. Geometric abstract art 'constructed' from autonomous visual elements as lines and plans. Characterized by precision, impersonality, a clear formal order and use of plastic and metal.


Muralism

1921-1940

José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros

Mexico. Big mural paintings with popular or national propaganda themes.

Productivism

1923

Natalia Serguéïevna Gontcharova, Mikhaïl Fiodorovitch Larionov, Marc Chagall, Paul Mansouroff, Ilya Kabakov

Russia. The artist is transformed into a producer of standard objects in the service of the new communist culture. The engineer get the upper hand and standards in production direct the artists to design, textile creation or graphic production.


Surrealism

1924-1966

Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, Hans Bellmer, Jacques Hérold, Wilfredo Lam, René Magritte, Man Ray, André Masson, Roberto Matta, Echaurren, Meret Oppenheim, Wolfgang Paalen, Toyen, Raoul Ubac

France, Belgia, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, England, West Indies. Expression through automatism and through a sort of dreamlike fantastic. Inspired by the psychoanalytical discoveries of Freud and the political ideology of Marxism.


Cercle et Carré

1929-1938

Joaquim Torrès-Garcia, Seuphor

Paris. Opposition to the Surrealism. Characterized as broadly Constructivism in outlook.


Concrete Art

1930-1945

Hélion, Carlsund, Tutundjian et Wantz

France, Netherlands. Non- figurative painting and sculpture. Characterized by a construction entirely from purely plastic elements: planes and colours. Cerebral abstract works.

Socialist Realism

1932-1988

Boris Mikhailovitch Koustodiev, Alexandr Mikhailovitch Guerassimov, Isaak Izraïlevitch Brodski, Gueorgui Gueorgueïevitch

Russia. Dictatorship of the proletariat in the arts which were subordinated to the needs and dictates of the Communist Party. New art in order to 'depict reality in its revolutionary development'.