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Curated category

Art movements

  • Abstract artA canvas in 1912 held a painting titled Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs. It measured 210 by 200 centimeters and hung in the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
  • RomanticismIn 1774, a young German author named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published a novel called The Sorrows of Young Werther. This book sent men across Europe into…
  • CubismPablo Picasso unveiled a painting called Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 that would become the starting point for Cubism.
  • ImpressionismIn the middle of the 19th century, France underwent rapid industrialization and social change while Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris.
  • Post-ImpressionismThe year 1886 marked the final Impressionist exhibition, a moment that signaled the end of an era and the beginning of something new.
  • PostmodernismThe word postmodern first appeared in print during 1870. Artist John Watkins Chapman used the phrase to describe a Postmodern style of painting that departed…
  • Pre-Raphaelite BrotherhoodIn 1848, seven young artists gathered in a house on Gower Street in London to form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The group included William Holman Hunt…
  • SurrealismIn the spring of 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire used the word surrealism for the first time in program notes for a ballet called Parade.
  • Constructivism (art)Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko founded Constructivism in 1915. This movement emerged from the ashes of World War I and Russian Futurism.
  • ModernismIn 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection. This book undermined religious certainty and challenged the idea that…
  • Art DecoParis, 1910. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées rose from the ground on avenue Montaigne with a clean rectangular form and no decoration on its façade.
  • BaroqueThe English word baroque comes directly from the French. Some scholars state that the French word originated from the Portuguese term 'a flawed pearl'…
  • RococoThe word rococo first appeared in print in 1825 to describe decoration that was out of style and old-fashioned. Pierre-Maurice Quays used the term as a…
  • Socialist realismOn the 25th of October 1917, Bolshevik forces seized control of Russia and immediately began reshaping its cultural landscape.
  • PrimitivismIn the arts of the Western world, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and…
  • Empire styleNapoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799 and immediately demanded a new visual language for his rule. The previous Directoire style had favored austere lines…