ART MOVEMENTS AND

ART STYLES
MOVEMENT AND STYLE

 An art movement is a tendency or a style of art with a

particularly specified objective and philosophy that is
adopted and followed by a group of artists during a
specific period that may span from a few months to years
or maybe even decades.
 Artworks that have certain features in common are
considered to have the same style. Sometimes this means
that they are part of the same movement, but not always.
The concept of "movements" in art is usually linked to a
specific time (and sometimes place) in history.
Abstract Expressionism

 This emerged after the World War II. Also known as

The New York School, this movement includes large
painted canvases, sculptures and other media as well.
The term ‘action painting’ is associated with Abstract
Expressionism, describing a highly dynamic and
spontaneous application of vigorous brushstrokes
and the effects of dripping and spilling paint onto
the canvas.
Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of
Art
Jackson Pollock, Convergence, 1952. Courtesy MoMA
Mark Rothko, Untitled
(Seagram Murals), 1958.
Courtesy Tate
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 imitative historicism
that dominated much of 19th-century art movements and
design.
Alphonse Mucha,
Four Seasons, 1890s.
Courtesy Mucha
Foundation
Building Façade by Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona.
Tiffany Pond Lily Table Lamp, c. 1903.
Courtesy Tiffany Lamps and Christies
Art Deco

 Although developed from Art Nouveau, Art Deco

simultaneously represented a reaction against it by
focusing on sharp geometric angles instead of the natural,
organic forms Art Nouveau was infused with. Emerging in
France before the First World War, Art Deco exploded in 1925
on the occasion of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs
(Exhibition of Decorative Arts). Blurring the line between
different mediums and fields, from architecture and furniture
to clothing and jewelry, Art Deco merged modern aesthetic
with skillful craftsmanship, advanced technology, and elegant
materials.
Set design for
Sheherazade
(1910) by Léon
Bakst
30 Rockefeller Plaza, NY, 1933,
by Raymond Hood and relief on
an Art Deco building in
Belgrade, Serbia, photo: Shira
Wolfe
Art Deco study by the
Paris design firm
Alavoine, 1928-1930,
now in the Brooklyn
Museum, NY.
Baroque

 The term Baroque, derived from the Portuguese

‘barocco’ meaning ‘irregular pearl or stone’, is a
movement 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, which is a far cry
from Surrealism, to produce drama, tension,
exuberance, and grandeur.
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Triumph of the Name of Jesus, ceiling fresco,
Church of the Gesù, Rome, 1661–1679
The Fountain of Four Rivers and the Sant Agnese Church in Piazza Navona,
Rome.
Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, 1606.
Classicism

 The principles embodied in the styles, theories, or

philosophies of the different types of art from ancient
Greece and Rome, concentrating on traditional
forms with a focus on elegance and symmetry.
Classicism Artists • Venus de Milo by
Alexandros of Antioch ~150-125 BC
The School of
Athens by
Raphael, 1509-
1511 AD
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 favour 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.
El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920. Courtesy Tate
László Moholy-
Nagy, A II
(Construction A
II), 1924.
Courtesy
Guggenheim
Cubism

 An artistic movement began in 1907 by artists Pablo

Picasso and Georges Braque who developed a visual
language whose geometric planes challenged the
conventions of representation in different types of art,
by reinventing traditional subjects such as nudes,
landscapes, and still lifes as increasingly fragmented
compositions.
Juan Gris, Still Life with
Checked Tablecloth, 1915.
Courtesy of Metropolitan
Museum NY
Georges Braque, Mandora,
1909-10. Courtesy of Tate
Modern
Dada / Dadaism

 An artistic and literary movement in art formed during

the First World War as a negative response to the
traditional social values and conventional artistic
practices of the different types of art at 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.
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain,
1917

This is a urinal presented by Duchamp as an “art”.

Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical
Head (The Spirit of our Time),
1920
Conceptual art

 Conceptual art, sometimes simply called conceptualism,

was one of several 20th-century art movements that
arose during the 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.”
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (Une et trois chaises), 1965.
Courtesy of Centre Pompidou
Cildo Meireles, Insertions into
Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola
Project, 1970. Photo courtesy of Tate
Expressionism

 Expressionism is 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 the 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.
Wassily Kandinsky, Der
Blaue Reiter, 1910
Edvard Munch, The Scream. Painting
reproduced in “Expressionism” by
Ashley Bassie
Fauvism

 Coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, Fauvism

(French for “wild beasts”) is one of the early 20th-
century art movements. Fauvism is associated
especially with Henri Matisse and André Derain,
whose works are characterized by strong, vibrant
colour and bold brushstrokes over realistic or
representational qualities.
Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat (La
femme au chapeau), 1905. Oil on
canvas.
Courtesy San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art.
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1905-06.
Courtesy MoMA.
Futurism

 Fairly unique among different types of art movements,

it is an Italian development in abstract art and
literature, founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, aiming to capture the dynamism, speed
and energy of the modern mechanical world.
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space, 1913. Courtesy
MoMA
Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the
Anarchist Galli, 1910-11.
Courtesy MoMA
Impressionism

 Impressionism is 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.
Edgar Degas, At the Races, 1877–1880, oil on canvas,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897, National
Gallery, London.
Installation Art

 Installation art is a movement developed at the same

time as pop art 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.
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror
Room – Phalli’s Field (Floor
Show), 1965
Jason Rhoades, My Brother / Brancuzi, 1995.
Courtesy the estate, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner and lender
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
Minimalism

 Another one of the art movements from the 1960s, and

typified by works composed of simple art, such as
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
abstract art must be one of a kind.
Frank Stella, title not known, 1967. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern
Sol LeWitt, Two
Open Modular
Cubes/Half-Off,
1972. Photo
courtesy of Tate
Modern
Optical Art

 A form of geometric abstract art that explores

optical sensations through the use of visual effects
such as repetition of simple forms, vibrating colour-
combinations, moiré patterns, foreground-background
confusion, and an exaggerated sense of depth. Op Art
paintings and works employ tricks of visual
perception like manipulating rules of perspective to
give the illusion of three-dimensional space.
Richard Anuskiewicz, Plus
Reversed, 1960. Photograph:
Museum of Art, University of
Austin, Texas
Bridget Riley, Blaze, 1964 ©
Bridget Riley 2018, Courtesy
National Galleries Scotland.
Surrealism

 Founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in 1924,

Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that
was active through World War II. The main goal of
Surrealism painting and Surrealism artworks was
to liberate thought, language, and human
experience from the oppressive boundaries of
rationalism by championing the irrational, the
poetic and the revolutionary.
André Breton, Egg in the
Church or the Snake, date
unknown. Photo courtesy
The Art Story
Salvador Dali, The
Persistence of Memory,
1931. Photo courtesy MoMA
Pop Art

 Pop Art emerged in the 1950s and was composed of

British and American artists who draw inspiration from
‘popular’ imagery and products from commercial
culture as 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 pop art sculptures.
David Hockney, We
Always See With
Memory.
Keith Haring, Radiant
Baby, 1990. Courtesy
Tate
Symbolism

 Symbolism emerged in the second half of the 19th

century, mainly in Catholic European countries where
industrialisation had developed to a great degree.
Starting as a literary movement, Symbolism was soon
identified with a young generation of painters who
wanted art to reflect emotions and ideas rather than
to represent the natural world in an objective way,
united by a shared pessimism and weariness of the
decadence in modern society.
Arnold Böcklin, The
Isle of the Dead, 1880.
Courtesy
Kunstmuseum Basel
Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?,
1897-1898. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts Boston