2. Impressionism: Origins of the Movement
Impressionism was an art movement that emerged in the second half of the 19th
century
among a group of Paris-based artists. The duration of the impressionist movement itself was
quite short, less than 20 years from 1872 to the mid-1880s. But it had a tremendous impact
and influence on the painting styles that followed, such as neo-impressionism, post-
impressionism, fauvism, and cubism—and even the artistic styles and movements of today.
3.
4. Expressionism
In the early 1900s, there arose in the Western art world a movement that came to be
known as expressionism. Expressionist artists created works with more emotional force, rather than
with realistic or natural images. To achieve this, they distorted outlines, applied strong colors, and
exaggerated forms. They worked more with their imagination and feelings, rather than with what
their eyes saw in the physical world.
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in
Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from
a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or
ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than
physical reality.
Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It
remained popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide
range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and
music.
The term is sometimes suggestive of angst. In a general sense, painters such as Matthias
Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though in practice the term is applied
mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual perspective has been
characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and
Impressionism.
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5. The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893),
which inspired 20th-century
Expressionists
Egon Schiele, 1910, Portrait of Eduard Kosmack, oil
on canvas, 100 × 100 cm, Österreichische Galerie
Belvedere
Wassily Kandinsky, 1911, Reiter (Lyrishes), oil
on canvas, 94 x 130 cm,Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen
Mannerist
"View of
Toledo" by El
Greco,
1595/1610 is a
precursor of
20th-century
expressionism
.
6. Dadaism
Dadaism was a style characterized by dream fantasies, memory images, and visual tricks and
surprises—as in the paintings of Marc Chagall and Giorgio de Chirico below. Although the works
appeared playful, the movement arose from the pain that a group of European artists felt after
the suffering brought by World War I. Wishing to protest against the civilization that had brought
on such horrors, these artists rebelled against established norms and authorities, and against the
traditional styles in art. They chose the child’s term for hobbyhorse, dada, to refer to their new
“non-style.”
Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century.
Dada in Zürich, Switzerland, began in 1916 at Cabaret Voltaire, spreading to Berlin shortly
thereafter, but the height of New York Dada was the year before, in 1915. The term anti-art, a
precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 when he created his first
readymades. Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political affinities with the radical left and was
also anti-bourgeois.
Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary
journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of
media. Key figures in the movement included Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz,
John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, and Max Ernst,
among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music
movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau Réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.
Hanover Dada - Kurt Schwitters M H Maxy Self Portrait 1932
7. Surrealism
Surrealism was a style that depicted an illogical, subconscious dream world beyond
the logical, conscious, physical one. Its name came from the term “super realism,” with its
artworks clearly expressing a departure from reality—as though the artists were dreaming,
seeing illusions, or experiencing an altered mental state.
Many surrealist works depicted morbid or gloomy subjects, as in those by Salvador
Dali. Others were quite playful and even humorous, such as those by Paul Klee and Joan Miro.
Surrealism was a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known
for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory
conditions of dream and reality". Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic
precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques
that allowed the unconscious to express itself.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non
sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of
the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader
André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary
movement.
Surrealism developed largely out of the Dada activities during World War I and the
most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement
spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of
many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social
theory.
Max Ernst, The Elephant
Celebes (1921), Tate, London
Woman with Her Throat Cut,
1932 (cast 1949), Museum of
Modern Art, New York City
Dorothea Tanning (1910-
2012),Etched Murmurs, etching,
1984. Tanning was the oldest
living original Surrealist painter.
8. 4
Pablo Picasso, 1910, Girl with a
Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on
canvas, 100.3 x 73.6 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon, 1907, considered to
be a major step towards the
founding of the Cubist movement
Paul Cézanne, Quarry
Bibémus, 1898-
1900, Museum
Folkwang, Essen, Germany
9. The movement known as futurism began in Italy in the early 1900s. As the name
implies, the futurists created art for a fast-paced, machine-propelled age. They admired
the motion, force, speed, and strength of mechanical forms. Thus, their works depicted the
dynamic sensation of all these—as can be seen in the works of Italian painter Gino Severini.
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early
20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the
car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city. Although it was largely an Italian phenomenon,
there were parallel movements in Russia, England, and elsewhere. The Futurists practiced in
every medium of art including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design,
interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture,
and even gastronomy. Its key figures were the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant'Elia, Bruno Munari,
Benedetta Cappa and Luigi Russolo, the Russians Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov,
Igor Severyanin, David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the
Portuguese Almada Negreiros. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the
weight of its past. Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurism's artistic style.
Important Futurist works included Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's sculpture
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, and Balla's painting Abstract Speed + Sound (pictured).
To some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism,
Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism.
Gino Severini, 1912, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal
Tabarin, oil on canvas with sequins, Museum of
Modern Art, New York
Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed + Sound,
1913–1914