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Romanticism
Romanticism was a movement that swept through just about every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to 1870. However, the Romantic Movement did not reach France until the1820's. Romanticism's essential spirit was one of revolt against an established order of things-against precise rules, laws, dogmas, and formulas that characterized Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism. Two artists were Théodore Géricault & Gustave Doré. -
Impressionism
Started in 1872 and ended in 1892. Focused less on true depiction of an object, person, etc. Brush strokes were lighter and colors were brighter. Artists abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. Two artists were Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. -
Naturalism
Naturalism was a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. Two artists in the movement were Gustave Courbet and Théodule Ribot. -
Symbolism
Symbolism was both an artistic and a literary movement that suggested ideas through symbols and emphasized the meaning behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. Started in 1880 and ended in 1910. Symbolism is the emphasis on emotions, feelings, ideas, and subjectivity rather than realism. Two artists were Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. -
Fauvism
Started in 1899 and ended in 1908. Fauvism was a period of bold, vibrant colors and separating color from its descriptive, representational purpose and allowing it to exist on the canvas as an independent element. Two artists in the movement were Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. -
Cubism
"Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view."
Started in 1907 and ended in 1922. The movement has been described as having two stages: 'Analytic' Cubism and 'Synthetic' Cubism. It turned away from the realistic modeling of figures and towards a system of representing bodies in space that employed small, tilted planes, set in a shallow space. -
Dada
Started in 1916 and ended in 1924. It orgininated in Switzerland. Dada is very avant-garde like and mocked materialistic and socialistic attitudes. The art created in the movement is so diverse that there is no set style of the pieces that can be identified. Two artists were Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. -
Surrealism
Started in 1924 and ended in 1966. It was founded in Paris by artists who wanted to unlock the power of the imagination. The original creator of Surrealism, André Breton, defined it as "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought." Two artists were Max Ernst and André Masson. -
Lettrism
Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s (ended in 1957) by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In French, the movement is called Lettrisme, from the French word for letter, arising from the fact that many of their early works centred around letters and other visual or spoken symbols. -
Fluxus
Started in 1959 and ended in 1978. It is often difficult to define Fluxus, as many Fluxus artists claim that the act of defining the movement is, in fact, too limiting and reductive.Fluxus sought to change the history of the world, not just the history of art. The persistent goal of most Fluxus artists was to destroy any boundary between art and life. It was an anti-art and the process of creating the work was most important, not the finished product. Two artists were Robert Filliou and Ben Vaut
