Art Movements

Abstract Expressionism - A painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly, and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas. Their work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, but which is actually highly planned. Some Abstract Expressionist artists were concerned with adopting a peaceful and mystical approach to a purely abstract image. Usually, there was no effort to represent the subject matter. Not all work was abstract, nor was all work expressive, but it was generally believed that the spontaneity of the artists' approach to their work would draw from and release the creativity of their unconscious minds. The expressive method of painting was often considered as important as the painting itself.


Baroque - The art style or art movement of the Counter-Reformation in the seventeenth century. Although some features appear in Dutch art, the Baroque style was limited mainly to Catholic countries. It is a style in which painters, sculptors, and architects sought emotion, movement, and variety in their works



Cubism - One of the most influential art movements (1907-1914) of the twentieth century, Cubism was begun by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1882-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) in 1907. They were greatly inspired by African sculpture, by painters Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906) and Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891), and by the Fauves.


In Cubism the subject matter is broken up, analyzed, and reassembled in an abstracted form.  Picasso and Braque initiated the movement when they followed the advice of Paul Cézanne, who in 1904 said artists should treat nature "in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone."


Impressionism - An art movement and style of painting that started in France during the 1860s. Impressionist artists tried to paint candid glimpses of their subjects showing the effects of sunlight on things at different times of day. The leaders of this movement were: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903), Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), and Pierre Renoir (French, 1841-1919). Some of the early work of Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906) fits into this style, though his later work so transcends it that it belongs to another movement known as Post-Impressionism.


Neo-impressionism - A movement in painting which was an outgrowth of and reaction to Impressionism. It was originated by Georges-Pierre Seurat (French, 1859-1891), who employed a technique called pointillism (also called divisionism, or confettiism), based on the scientific juxtaposition of touches or dots of pure color. His most famous painting is A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884, 1884-1886, oil paint on canvas, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago). The brain blends the colors automatically in the involuntary process of optical mixing. Georges Seurat, 1859-1891. French. Post Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. Used dots of six basic colors to create his pictures (pointillism). A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte.


Op Art - A twentieth-century art movement and style in which artists sought to create an impression of movement on the picture surface by means of optical illusion. It is derived from, and is also known as, Optical Art and Perceptual Abstraction. In the 1960s art world, some critics faulted Op Art's persistent involvement with optical illusion at a time when "the flatness of the picture plane" was the mantra on either side of the Color Field - Minimalist aisle. Clement Greenberg saw flatness as painting's essence. Donald Judd saw it as an escape route into three dimensions.


Pop Art - An art movement and style that had its origins in England in the 1950s and made its way to the United States during the 1960s. Pop artists have focused attention upon familiar images of the popular culture such as billboards, comic strips, magazine advertisements, and supermarket products.


Realism -The realistic and natural representation of people, places, and/or things in a work of art. The opposite of idealization. One of the common themes of postmodernism is that this popular notion of an unmediated presentation is not possible. This sense of realism is sometimes considered synonymous with naturalism.



Romanticism - An art movement and style that flourished in the early nineteenth century. It emphasized the emotions painted in a bold, dramatic manner. Romantic artists rejected the cool reasoning of classicism — the established art of the times — to paint pictures of nature in its untamed state, or other exotic settings filled with dramatic action, often with an emphasis on the past. Classicism was nostalgic too, but Romantics were more emotional, usually melancholic, even melodramatically tragic.


Joseph M.W. Turner, 1775-1851. English. Romanticism. Painted landscapes with brilliant glow and pure colors. Rockets and Blue Light


Symbolism - An art movement which rejected the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of the Industrial Age, in order to depict the symbols of ideas. Influenced by Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it thrived in France in the late nineteenth century, its influence spreading throughout much of Europe. Rather than the precise equivalents of ideas or emotions, its symbols were meant to be more mysterious, ambiguous suggestions of meanings.