Art movements of the 20th century
From Fauvism in 1905 to the art of the 1980s.
The 20th century saw more art movements than any before it, as artists responded to new technology, two world wars and mass media. Here they are in the order they began.
Ashcan School
American realist painters who depicted everyday life in New York, especially in its poorer neighbourhoods.
Key artists: George Bellows, Robert Henri, John Sloan, William James Glackens
Key features: Everyday city life: streets, tenements, bars and boxing matches; Dark palette and quick, sketchy brushwork; Many members had worked as newspaper illustrators.
Fauvism
Bold, non-naturalistic colour. Critics called Matisse, Derain and their circle 'les fauves' (the wild beasts) after the 1905 Salon d'Automne.
Key artists: Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy
Key features: Intense, non-naturalistic colour applied straight from the tube; Colour used to express emotion and structure; Simplified forms and flat areas.
Expressionism
Distorted form and intense colour used to express emotion rather than describe the world.
Key artists: Edvard Munch, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee
Key features: Emotion and inner experience over the outside world; Distorted forms and exaggerated, often clashing colour; Raw, energetic brushwork and woodcut printmaking.
Bloomsbury Group
A circle of English writers, artists and thinkers that included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.
Key artists: Vita Sackville-West, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington
Key features: An informal circle of friends rather than an art movement with a style; Painters influenced by Post-Impressionism and Fauvism; Bold colour and decoration in interiors and design.
Cubism
Developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Cubism broke objects into geometric facets seen from several viewpoints at once.
Key artists: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Francis Picabia
Key features: Objects broken into geometric facets; Several viewpoints shown at once; Flattened space instead of traditional perspective.
The Eight
Eight American painters who exhibited together in New York in 1908 in protest against the conservative National Academy of Design.
Key artists: Robert Henri, John Sloan, William James Glackens, Maurice Prendergast
Key features: A protest against the exhibition policy of the National Academy of Design; Varied styles, from urban realism to Impressionism and Symbolism; Five members later linked with the realist Ashcan School.
Futurism
Launched by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, celebrating speed, machines and the modern city.
Key artists: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Umberto Boccioni, Alexander Archipenko, Natalia Goncharova
Key features: Speed, technology, machines and the modern city; Dynamism: repeated forms and lines of force suggest movement; Fragmented forms influenced by Cubism.
Der Blaue Reiter
A Munich circle led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc that explored the spiritual power of colour.
Key artists: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Max Ernst
Key features: Spiritual and symbolic use of colour; Movement towards abstraction; Animals and nature as symbols of purity (Marc).
Suprematism
Kazimir Malevich's abstract art of pure geometric forms.
Key artists: Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Nadezhda Udaltsova
Key features: Pure geometric forms: squares, circles, crosses and rectangles; A limited range of colours; Shapes floating on a white ground.
Constructivism
Russian avant-garde art and design that served industry and society.
Key artists: El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko
Key features: Art as a tool for building a new society; Industrial materials such as metal, glass and wood; Geometric, abstract forms.
Dada
An anti-art movement born in Zurich during the First World War that mocked logic and tradition.
Key artists: Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Jean Arp
Key features: Rejection of logic, reason and traditional art; Chance, absurdity and humour; Collage, photomontage, readymades and sound poetry.
De Stijl
A Dutch movement led by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, reduced to straight lines and primary colours.
Key artists: Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Gerrit Rietveld, Gino Severini
Key features: Straight horizontal and vertical lines; Primary colours with black, white and grey; Abstraction and universal harmony.
Harlem Renaissance
A flowering of African American art, music and literature centred on Harlem, New York.
Key artists: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Elizabeth Catlett, Augusta Savage
Key features: Celebration of African American life, history and identity; Interest in African art and heritage; Links between visual art, jazz, blues and literature.
Bauhaus
The German art school that united art, craft and industrial design and shaped modern design.
Key artists: Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee
Key features: Unity of art, craft and technology; Simple, practical design shaped by function; Geometric shapes and primary colours.
Group of Seven
Canadian landscape painters who created a national style from the northern wilderness.
Key artists: A. Y. Jackson, Franklin Carmichael, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald
Key features: The Canadian landscape, especially Algonquin Park, Algoma and the north; Bold colour and simplified forms; Strong outlines and rhythmic, decorative patterns.
Art Deco
Sleek geometry and luxury in design, posters, painting and architecture.
Key artists: Tamara de Lempicka, Victor Horta, Eliel Saarinen, René Lalique
Key features: Bold geometric shapes, zigzags and sunbursts; Streamlined forms celebrating speed and the machine age; Luxurious materials: lacquer, chrome, ivory and exotic woods.
Surrealism
Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism explored dreams and the unconscious.
Key artists: Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Joan Miró
Key features: Dreams and the unconscious mind, influenced by Freud; Unexpected juxtapositions and dream imagery; Automatic drawing and writing to bypass conscious control.
Black Mountain College
An experimental college in North Carolina where art was central to education and many artists of the post-war avant-garde taught or studied.
Key artists: Walter Gropius, Buckminster Fuller, Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers
Key features: Art at the centre of a liberal-arts education; Experimental teaching, influenced by the Bauhaus; Collaboration between artists, musicians, dancers and poets.
Abstract Expressionism
The New York School of large, gestural 'action painting' and meditative colour fields.
Key artists: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning
Key features: Large canvases; Abstraction used to express emotion and the unconscious; Gestural 'action painting' (Pollock, de Kooning).
Action Painting
Action painting: paint dripped, splashed and swept on to the canvas, making the act of painting itself the subject.
Key artists: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline
Key features: Paint dripped, poured, splashed or swept on to the canvas; The physical act of painting as the subject; Large canvases, often worked on the floor.
Colour Field Painting
Large, flat areas of colour that envelop the viewer.
Key artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Alma Thomas, Frank Bowling
Key features: Large flat areas of colour; Paint stained or soaked into raw canvas; Little or no gesture or texture.
Pop Art
Emerging in Britain and the United States, Pop Art borrowed imagery from advertising, comics and consumer culture.
Key artists: Victor Vasarely, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jeff Koons
Key features: Imagery from advertising, comics, packaging and celebrities; Bright, flat colour and bold outlines; Commercial techniques such as screen printing.
Indian River School (Florida Highwaymen)
The Florida Highwaymen: African American landscape painters who sold their work from the roadside.
Key artists: Alfred Hair, Al Black, James Gibson, Roy McLendon
Key features: Florida landscapes: palms, beaches, rivers and sunsets; Quick, bright paintings on board; Sold directly to the public, often from car boots along the highway.
Situationist International
A group of avant-garde artists and thinkers who attacked consumer society through art, writing and political action.
Key artists: Asger Jorn, Guy Debord, J.V. Martin
Key features: Critique of consumer and spectacle society; 'Dérive': unplanned drifting through the city; 'Détournement': turning existing images and texts against themselves.
Op Art
Optical art that uses pattern and colour to make the eye see movement.
Key artists: M. C. Escher, Victor Vasarely, Josef Albers, Bridget Riley
Key features: Optical illusions of movement, swelling or flickering; Precise geometric patterns; Strong contrast, often black and white.
Minimalism
Art pared back to simple geometric forms and industrial materials.
Key artists: Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd
Key features: Simple geometric forms; Industrial materials and fabrication; Repetition and serial arrangement.
Fluxus
An international network of artists, composers and poets who blurred art and life through events, performances and multiples.
Key artists: Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell
Key features: Performance, events and 'happenings'; Simple instructions or 'event scores'; Humour and playfulness.
Conceptual Art
Art in which the idea matters more than the finished object.
Key artists: Marina Abramović, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt
Key features: The idea or concept is the work; Text, instructions, photographs and documents; Dematerialisation: little or no traditional object.
Photorealism
Paintings made from photographs with meticulous, camera-like precision.
Key artists: Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Duane Hanson, Ralph Goings
Key features: Paintings based on photographs; Extreme detail and smooth finish; Everyday subjects: shop windows, cars, diners and portraits.
Graffiti Art
Spray-painted lettering and imagery from New York's streets and subways, which entered galleries in the 1980s.
Key artists: Keith Haring, Invader, Panmela Castro, Ememem
Key features: Spray paint and markers; Stylised lettering, 'tags' and 'pieces'; Bright colour and bold outlines.
Postmodernism
Art after Modernism: irony, quotation, mixed styles and a questioning of 'grand narratives'.
Key artists: Robert Venturi, Robert Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, Arata Isozaki
Key features: Irony, parody and quotation of earlier art; Mixing of styles, media and high and low culture; Doubt about originality and progress.
Neo-Expressionism
A return to large, expressive and figurative painting after Minimalism and Conceptual art.
Key artists: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Jörg Immendorff
Key features: Large, expressive figurative paintings; Rough, energetic brushwork and thick paint; Myth, history and personal themes.
Massurrealism
A term coined in 1992 by James Seehafer for art combining Surrealism, Pop art and mass-media technology.
Key artists: James Seehafer
Key features: Surreal imagery combined with Pop art; Mass media and digital technology; Collage and digital manipulation.
Frequently asked questions
What was the most important art movement of the 20th century?
There is no single answer, but Cubism, which broke with single-point perspective, is often named as the most influential. Abstract Expressionism moved the centre of the art world to New York, and Pop Art transformed art after 1960.