Types of art styles, with examples
Eleven families of style, each with the movements and example works behind it.
"Art style" is used loosely for the way a work looks: how realistic it is, how it uses colour and line, and what it is trying to do. Most styles grew out of particular art movements. Here are the main types of art styles, grouped into families, with the movements that defined each one.
Realistic and true to life · Classical and idealised · Dramatic and emotional · Light and colour · Expressive and bold colour · Abstract and geometric · Dreams, myth and the unconscious · Decorative and design-led · Popular culture and the street · Ideas, performance and anti-art · Self-taught and traditional
Realistic and true to life
Art that shows the world as it looks, from everyday scenes to photographic detail.
L'Origine du monde
Stag at Sharkey's
Sacramento Airport. 1970.
The Gleaners
Realism
Ordinary people and everyday life, painted without idealisation.
Look for: Everyday subjects and working people instead of myth or history; Truthful, unidealised depiction of the world.
Ashcan School
American realist painters who depicted everyday life in New York, especially in its poorer neighbourhoods.
Look for: Everyday city life: streets, tenements, bars and boxing matches; Dark palette and quick, sketchy brushwork.
Photorealism
Paintings made from photographs with meticulous, camera-like precision.
Look for: Paintings based on photographs; Extreme detail and smooth finish.
Barbizon School
French painters who worked near the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau and painted nature directly.
Look for: Landscape treated as a subject in its own right; Painting from direct observation, often outdoors.
Hudson River School
American landscape painters who celebrated the wilderness of the Hudson Valley and, later, the American West.
Look for: Large, detailed landscapes of American wilderness; Romantic sense of awe and the divine in nature.
Classical and idealised
Art built on the balance, proportion and ideal beauty of ancient Greece and Rome.
Bust of Queen Nefertiti
The Last Supper
Hall of Mirrors
Statue of Liberty
Ancient & Classical Art
The art of the ancient Mediterranean world, from Egyptian tomb painting to Greek and Roman sculpture.
Look for: Art made for religious, funerary and civic purposes rather than for private collectors; Egyptian art follows strict conventions, such as figures shown with the head in profile and the eye and shoulders seen from the front.
Renaissance
A revival of classical ideals that began in Italy. Linear perspective, anatomy and oil painting transformed European art.
Look for: Linear perspective creates convincing three-dimensional space; Careful study of anatomy and the natural world.
Classicism
Art that takes ancient Greek and Roman art as its model of perfection, prizing order, balance and restraint.
Look for: Clarity, symmetry and balance; Idealised human figures based on ancient sculpture.
Neoclassicism
A return to the clarity, order and restraint of ancient Greek and Roman art.
Look for: Inspired by ancient Greece and Rome and by the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum; Clear outlines, smooth finish and calm, balanced compositions.
Dramatic and emotional
Art that aims to move the viewer through drama, contrast and strong feeling.
Manneken Pis
Liberty Leading the People
The Ambassadors
Ophelia
Baroque
Drama, movement and strong contrasts of light and dark. The Dutch Golden Age of painting belongs to this period.
Look for: Dramatic contrasts of light and shadow (chiaroscuro and tenebrism); Movement, energy and diagonal compositions.
Romanticism
Emotion, imagination and the overwhelming power of nature, in reaction to the age of reason.
Look for: Emotion and imagination valued above reason; Awe before the power of nature: storms, mountains and the sea (the 'sublime').
Mannerism
A late-Renaissance style of elongated figures, complex poses and artificial elegance.
Look for: Elongated, graceful figures with small heads; Twisting, complicated poses (the 'figura serpentinata').
Pre-Raphaelites
A brotherhood founded in London in 1848 that rejected academic convention in favour of sharp detail, bright colour and literary subjects.
Look for: Intense detail and bright, jewel-like colour; Painting on a wet white ground to make colours glow.
Light and colour
Art about the changing effects of light and the science of colour.
Impression, Sunrise
The Night Café
The Starry Night
Ia Orana Maria
Impressionism
Light, colour and modern life caught with quick, visible brushwork. The group held its first exhibition in Paris in 1874.
Look for: Visible, broken brushstrokes; Capturing fleeting effects of light, weather and atmosphere.
Pointillism
Pictures built from small dots or dabs of pure colour, pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
Look for: Small, separate dots or dabs of pure colour; Colours mix in the viewer's eye rather than on the palette.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who built on Impressionism but pushed towards structure, symbolism and expressive colour.
Look for: Builds on Impressionist colour but rejects its focus on fleeting effects; Strong structure and geometric form (Cézanne).
Les Nabis
A group of young Paris painters, including Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, inspired by Paul Gauguin.
Look for: Flat areas of bold, non-naturalistic colour; Decorative patterns and simplified forms.
Expressive and bold colour
Art that distorts form and colour to express emotion.
Woman with a hat
Portrait of Wally
The fate of the animals
Folk Thing Zero
Fauvism
Bold, non-naturalistic colour. Critics called Matisse, Derain and their circle 'les fauves' (the wild beasts) after the 1905 Salon d'Automne.
Look for: Intense, non-naturalistic colour applied straight from the tube; Colour used to express emotion and structure.
Expressionism
Distorted form and intense colour used to express emotion rather than describe the world.
Look for: Emotion and inner experience over the outside world; Distorted forms and exaggerated, often clashing colour.
Der Blaue Reiter
A Munich circle led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc that explored the spiritual power of colour.
Look for: Spiritual and symbolic use of colour; Movement towards abstraction.
Neo-Expressionism
A return to large, expressive and figurative painting after Minimalism and Conceptual art.
Look for: Large, expressive figurative paintings; Rough, energetic brushwork and thick paint.
Action Painting
Action painting: paint dripped, splashed and swept on to the canvas, making the act of painting itself the subject.
Look for: Paint dripped, poured, splashed or swept on to the canvas; The physical act of painting as the subject.
Abstract and geometric
Art that does not depict recognisable objects, built from shape, line and colour.
Guernica
Black Square (1915)
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
Broadway Boogie Woogie
Cubism
Developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Cubism broke objects into geometric facets seen from several viewpoints at once.
Look for: Objects broken into geometric facets; Several viewpoints shown at once.
Suprematism
Kazimir Malevich's abstract art of pure geometric forms.
Look for: Pure geometric forms: squares, circles, crosses and rectangles; A limited range of colours.
Constructivism
Russian avant-garde art and design that served industry and society.
Look for: Art as a tool for building a new society; Industrial materials such as metal, glass and wood.
De Stijl
A Dutch movement led by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, reduced to straight lines and primary colours.
Look for: Straight horizontal and vertical lines; Primary colours with black, white and grey.
Abstract Expressionism
The New York School of large, gestural 'action painting' and meditative colour fields.
Look for: Large canvases; Abstraction used to express emotion and the unconscious.
Colour Field Painting
Large, flat areas of colour that envelop the viewer.
Look for: Large flat areas of colour; Paint stained or soaked into raw canvas.
Op Art
Optical art that uses pattern and colour to make the eye see movement.
Look for: Optical illusions of movement, swelling or flickering; Precise geometric patterns.
Minimalism
Art pared back to simple geometric forms and industrial materials.
Look for: Simple geometric forms; Industrial materials and fabrication.
Dreams, myth and the unconscious
Art that turns away from the visible world towards dreams, symbols and the mind.
The Yellow Christ
The Treachery of Images
Symbolism
Dreams, myth and mood rather than the observed world.
Look for: Ideas, dreams and emotions rather than the visible world; Myth, religion, death and desire as recurring themes.
Surrealism
Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism explored dreams and the unconscious.
Look for: Dreams and the unconscious mind, influenced by Freud; Unexpected juxtapositions and dream imagery.
Massurrealism
A term coined in 1992 by James Seehafer for art combining Surrealism, Pop art and mass-media technology.
Look for: Surreal imagery combined with Pop art; Mass media and digital technology.
Decorative and design-led
Styles that shaped design, architecture and everyday objects as much as painting.
Bronze Horseman
Atkinsons Building
The Kiss
Christ the Redeemer
Rococo
A light, playful and ornate style of 18th-century France, full of pastel colour, curves and courtly pleasures.
Look for: Light, pastel colours and delicate brushwork; Playful, romantic subjects: love, leisure and aristocratic parties (the 'fête galante').
Arts and Crafts Movement
A design reform movement that championed handcraft, honest materials and beauty in everyday objects.
Look for: Handcraft valued over machine production; Simple forms and honest use of materials.
Art Nouveau
Flowing, organic lines in painting, posters, design and architecture.
Look for: Flowing, curving 'whiplash' lines; Forms inspired by plants, flowers and insects.
Art Deco
Sleek geometry and luxury in design, posters, painting and architecture.
Look for: Bold geometric shapes, zigzags and sunbursts; Streamlined forms celebrating speed and the machine age.
Bauhaus
The German art school that united art, craft and industrial design and shaped modern design.
Look for: Unity of art, craft and technology; Simple, practical design shaped by function.
Popular culture and the street
Art that borrows from advertising, comics, mass media and the street.
Campbell's Soup Cans
You Are Beautiful
Pop Art
Emerging in Britain and the United States, Pop Art borrowed imagery from advertising, comics and consumer culture.
Look for: Imagery from advertising, comics, packaging and celebrities; Bright, flat colour and bold outlines.
Graffiti Art
Spray-painted lettering and imagery from New York's streets and subways, which entered galleries in the 1980s.
Look for: Spray paint and markers; Stylised lettering, 'tags' and 'pieces'.
Ideas, performance and anti-art
Art in which the idea, action or provocation matters more than a finished object.
Bicycle Wheel
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Roadside gallery
Artist's Shit
Dada
An anti-art movement born in Zurich during the First World War that mocked logic and tradition.
Look for: Rejection of logic, reason and traditional art; Chance, absurdity and humour.
Futurism
Launched by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, celebrating speed, machines and the modern city.
Look for: Speed, technology, machines and the modern city; Dynamism: repeated forms and lines of force suggest movement.
Fluxus
An international network of artists, composers and poets who blurred art and life through events, performances and multiples.
Look for: Performance, events and 'happenings'; Simple instructions or 'event scores'.
Conceptual Art
Art in which the idea matters more than the finished object.
Look for: The idea or concept is the work; Text, instructions, photographs and documents.
Situationist International
A group of avant-garde artists and thinkers who attacked consumer society through art, writing and political action.
Look for: Critique of consumer and spectacle society; 'Dérive': unplanned drifting through the city.
Postmodernism
Art after Modernism: irony, quotation, mixed styles and a questioning of 'grand narratives'.
Look for: Irony, parody and quotation of earlier art; Mixing of styles, media and high and low culture.
Self-taught and traditional
Art made outside the academies, by untrained artists or within community traditions.
The Sleeping Gypsy
Naïve Art
Art by artists without formal training, with clear outlines, bright colour and a direct, childlike vision.
Look for: Artists without academic training; Simple, flat forms and bright colours.
Folk Art
Traditional art and craft made by people within a community, usually without academic training.
Look for: Made within a community tradition rather than an art school; Often useful objects: textiles, pottery, furniture and toys.
Indian River School (Florida Highwaymen)
The Florida Highwaymen: African American landscape painters who sold their work from the roadside.
Look for: Florida landscapes: palms, beaches, rivers and sunsets; Quick, bright paintings on board.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main types of art styles?
Realistic and true to life; Classical and idealised; Dramatic and emotional; Light and colour; Expressive and bold colour; Abstract and geometric; Dreams, myth and the unconscious; Decorative and design-led; Popular culture and the street; Ideas, performance and anti-art; Self-taught and traditional.
What is the difference between an art style and an art movement?
An art movement is a group of artists working with shared ideas at a particular time and place, such as Impressionism in 1870s Paris. A style is the look that results, which later artists can adopt long after the movement has ended.