Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an specifically American post-World War II art movement. It was the first American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.
After WWII, with images of the Holocaust everywhere, it seemed redundant for socially-aware artists to paint these same images … a photograph at the time was much more powerful. Artists began to explore color and shape and to paint an entire canvas orange or blue.
These works were produced in an extremely specific geographical setting and revealed a specific attitude. It was the result of the rivalry and dialogue between young American artists and the large community of European artists living in exile in New York. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity and self-expression of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. The movement describe formal trend in American abstraction at the time. It can be broadly divided into two groups: Action Painting and Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting. It has its non-American parallels with similar aims (Art Informel, Cobra, Lyrical Abstraction).
By the 1960s, the movement had lost most of its impact, and was no longer so influential. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against, abstract expressionism had begun, such as pop art and minimalism. However, many painters who had produced abstract expressionist work continued to work in that style for many years afterwards.

Jackson Pollack’s Guardians of the Secret

Surrealism

It was an artistic movement that brought together artists, thinkers and researchers in hunt of sense of expression of the unconscious. They were searching for the definition of new aesthetic, new humankind and a new social order. Surrealists had their forerunners in Italian Metaphysical Painters (Giorgio de Chirico) in early 1910’s.

As the artistic movement, Surrealism came into being after the French poet Andre Breton 1924 published the first Manifeste du surrealisme. In this book Breton suggested that rational thought was repressive to the powers of creativity and imagination and thus inimical to artistic expression. An admirer of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the subconscious, Breton felt that contact with this hidden part of the mind could produce poetic truth.

The Surrealist art movement was dedicated to expressing the imagination in a method that was free from the control, convention, and reason. Surrealism began in the 1920’s and ended in the 1930’s. Surrealism was similar to Dadaism in that it was anti rationalist, but was different in that it was lighter in spirit. One of the major influences on the Surrealist movement was Freud’s model of the subconscious, and emerging theories on our perception of reality. Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by Andre Breton who created a Manifesto of Surrealism. The aim of the movement was an attempt to discover a super-reality by interpreting dream and reality together; two conditions that often contradict one another. In essence, Surrealists love incongruity, spontaneity, and the randomness of life. Famous Surrealist artists include Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, MC Escher, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, and Man Ray.

 

Metaphysical Painting

Metaphysical Painting (ital. Pittura Metafisica) is an Italian art movement, born in 1917 with the work of Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara. The word metaphysical, adopted by De Chirico himself, is core to the poetics of the movement.

They depicted a dreamlike imagery, with figures and objects seemingly frozen in time. Metaphysical Painting artists accept the representation of the visible world in a traditional perspective space, but the unusual arrangement of human beings as dummy-like models, objects in strange, illogical contexts, the unreal lights and colors, the unnatural static of still figures.

Opposition to futurism, Metaphysical Painting brings no new way of painting but only a new way of seeing things. Using a sort of different logic, Carrà and De Chirico painted deserted squares, silent, rigidly rendered buildings, colonnades and shadows, trains passing faraway in the distance, clocks and statues. There is never any precise hint in the paintings about the place or moment of the scene. They are eventless, with a tome of silence, imminence and enigma. All that generated a new reality which goes beyond the meaning of the things presented, creating a sense of expectation and mystery and bonded with the unconscious mind.

We can see Metaphysical Painting today as the reaction against both Cubism and Futurism during the period of Italian Fascism. It may seem strange that many of the achievements of 20th century Italian art came during that time. On the other side, Metaphysical Painting creates the premises of Surrealism.

DADA

Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later movements including Surrealism.

According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored them. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning–interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends. Perhaps it is then ironic that Dada is an influential movement in Modern art. Dada became a commentary on art and the world, thus becoming art itself.

The artists of the Dada movement had become disillusioned by art, art history and history in general. Many of them were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical of humanity after seeing what men were capable of doing to each other on the battlefields of Europe. Thus they became attracted to a nihilistic view of the world (they thought that nothing mankind had achieved was worthwhile, not even art), and created art in which chance and randomness formed the basis of creation. The basis of Dada is nonsense. With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down.

 

Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. mocks the Mona Lisa.

Synchronism

Synchronism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell. Their abstract “synchronies”, based on a theory of color that analogized it to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art. Synchronism became the first American avant-garde art movement to receive international attention.

Synchronism is based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena, and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony. Macdonald-Wright and Russell believed that by painting in color scales, their work could evoke musical sensations.

The earliest synchronist works were similar to Fauvist paintings. The multicolored shapes of synchronist paintings also resembled those found in orphism.

Patrick Henry Bruce (1881-1936) was an American cubist painter. Bruce exhibited regularly in the Salon d’Automne, and met many of the leading artists of the early twentieth century avant garde. During a period of close friendship with Sonia and Robert Delaunay in 1912–14 his paintings were influenced by Orphism, but Bruce never formed an attachment to any school.

Section D’or

The year 1912 marked the passage from Analytic Cubism to Synthetic Cubism and witnessed the movement’s widespread propagation. Gleizes and Metzinger published the first doctrinal work devoted to the new movement. In the course of the autumn, the historic exhibition of the Section d’Or at the La Boétie Gallery in Paris gathered together in one vast collection all Cubism’s adherents — with the sole exception of its two creators, Braque and Picasso, who showed their works only at the Kahnweiler Gallery. The exhibition included not only Juan Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger, Lhote, Delaunay, Marcoussis and Roger de La Fresnaye, but also Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Dumont, and Agero. Many of these painters retained only the superficial appearance of Cubism, the geometrical fragmentation of the painted surface, and later turned in opposite directions, some going back to traditional formulae, while others were borne away by abstract currents or Dada experiments, but the unity of their search was based on a common admiration for Cézanne and his constructive lesson. The initiative and the title of this exhibition, which created a considerable stir, were due to the painter and engraver Jacques Villon. In his studio at Puteaux, near Paris, a number of artists passionately interested in problems of rhythm and proportion met on Sunday afternoons, among them the two theoreticians of Cubism, Gleizes and Metzinger, Picabia, Léger La Fresnaye, as well as the poets Paul Fort, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Jean Cocteau and Joachim Gasquet. Villon developed his theory of vision by pyramids, taken from Leonardo da Vinci, and suggested during these meetings the title of ‘Section d’Or’, borrowed from the treatise of the Bolognese monk Luca Pacioli, The Divine Proportion, published in Venice in 1509 and illustrated by Leonardo himself. Formulated by Vitruvius and taken up again during the Renaissance, the golden section or divine proportion (or gate of harmony) is the ideal relation between two magnitudes, expressed numerically as and demonstrated in many masterpieces of different arts, applied consciously or, more often, by instinct. ‘There is,’ Voltaire said, ‘a hidden geometry in all the arts that the hand produces.’ Although the golden section was not the only constant to which the Cubists referred for the mathematical organization of their canvas, it reflected the profound need for order and measure that they felt more through sensibility and reason than as a result of calculation. Distorted by the incomprehension or bad faith of critics, the ‘Section d’Or’ exhibition met with immense avant-garde success in France and abroad, and constituted a general rally under the sign of Cézannian architecture and geometrical discipline.

 

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group
was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. Der Blaue Reiter was a movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905.

Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky’s painting Last Judgement from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked a central artistic manifesto, but was centred around Kandinsky and Marc. Paul Klee was also involved.  The name of the movement is the title of a painting that Kandinsky created in 1903, but it is unclear whether it is the origin of the name of the movement as professor Klaus Lankheit found out that the title of the painting had been overwritten. Kandinsky wrote 20 year later
that the name is derived from Marc’s enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky’s love of riders, combined with both love of the colour
blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).

Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.

Der Blaue Reiter organized exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany. They also published an almanac
featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with children’s paintings. In 1913 they exhibited in the first
German Herbstsalon.

The group was disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed
in combat. Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky were forced to move back to
Russia because of their Russian citizenship. There were also differences in opinion within the group. As a result, Der
Blaue Reiter was short-lived, lasting for only three years from 1911 to 1914. In 1923 Kandinsky, Feininger, Klee and Alexej von Jawlensky formed Die Blaue Vier (the Blue Four) group, and exhibited and lectured together in the United States in 1924. An extensive collection of paintings by Der Blaue Reiter is exhibited in the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

1914 Girls under by August Macke

 

Futurism

Futurism came into being with the appearance of a manifesto published by the poet Filippo Marinetti on the front page of the February 20, 1909, issue of Le Figaro. It was the very first manifesto of this kind.

Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists. He and others espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. Futurism was presented as a modernist movement celebrating the technological, future era. The car, the plane, the industrial town were representing the motion in modern life and the technological triumph of man over nature. Some of these ideas, specially the use of modern materials and technique, were taken up later by Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968), the cubist, the constructivist and the dadaist.

Futurism was inspired by the development of Cubism and went beyond its techniques. The Futurist painters made the rhythm of their repetitions of lines. Inspired by some photographic experiments, they were breaking motion into small sequences, and using the wide range of angles within a given time-frame all aimed to incorporate the dimension of time within the picture. Brilliant colors and flowing brush strokes also additionally were creating the illusion of movement. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism.

Futurists mixed activism and artistic research. They organized events that caused scandal. Everything was there to help them to glorify Italy and lead their country into the age of modernity. Certain Futurists vehemently promoted themselves to try to join forces with the Fascists, who were coming to power at the time. But Mussolini showed a preference for the Novecento Italiano, movement of artists who identified with the classical order and Italian heritage.

Futurism was a largely Italian movement, although it also had adherents in other countries, France and most notably Russia. Close to Futurism with its inspirations and motivations wasPrecisionism, an important development of American Modernism.

Although Futurism itself is now regarded as extinct, having died out during the 1920s, powerful echoes of Marinetti’s thought, still remain in modern, popular culture and art. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism. 

Boccioni’s The street invades the house

Die Brucke

Die Brucke was the association of artist expressionists from Dresden, Germany. Their first exhibition was held in 1906.Die Brucke made use of a technique that was controlled, intentionally unsophisticated and crude, developing a style hallmarked by expressive distortions and emphases. Die Brucke artists often used color similar to the Fauves, and they were also influenced by art form from Africa and Oceania.

Some of the painters in the group sympathized with the revolutionary socialism of the day and drew inspiration from Van Gogh’s ideas on artists’ communities. Die Brucke expressionists believed that their social criticism of the ugliness of modern life could lead to a new and better future.

Les Fauves

Fauvism is a movement in French painting that revolutionized the concept of color in modern art. Fauves earned their name (“les fauves”-wild beasts) by shocking exhibit visitors on their first public appearance, in 1905.

   At the end of the nineteenth century, neo Impressionist painters were already using pure colors, but they applied those colors to their canvases in small strokes. The fauves rejected the impressionist palette of soft, shimmering tones in favor of radical new style, full of violent color and bold distortions.
These painters never formed a movement in the strict sense of the word, but for years they would nurse a shared ambition, before each went his separate and more personal way.
Main representatives od Les Fauves are; Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees van Dongen, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Georges Braque, Othon Friesz, Henry- Charles Manguin, Jean Puy.

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draughtsmanship. As a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing is apparent in a body of work spanning over a half-century, and won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.