20th-century art

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Twentieth-century art began with modernism in the late 1800s and grew into many different movements. Earlier styles like Post-Impressionism, Art Nouveau and Symbolism led to new groups in the early 20th century, such as Fauvism in France and Die Brücke in Germany.

Fauvism used very bright, wild colors in pictures that still showed recognizable subjects. Die Brücke and another German group, Der Blaue Reiter, pushed for emotional and spiritual painting. Kandinsky and others explored abstract art, where images aren’t meant to look like real things.

Cubism, led by Picasso and Braque, broke traditional perspective by showing many viewpoints at once on a flat surface. Futurism celebrated movement and machines. Dada rejected conventional art by using everyday objects, like Duchamp’s famous urinal, and Picabia made provocative mechanical images.

In Russia, Suprematism, led by Kasimir Malevich, created simple non-representational works, such as a black square. The Jack of Diamonds group, led by Mikhail Larionov, was expressionist in feel. Dada gave way to Surrealism, which used ideas from Freudian psychology to depict dreams and the unconscious, as in Dalí’s surreal scenes.

Kandinsky’s move toward non-representational art influenced American Abstract Expressionism after World War II. Artists like Jackson Pollock dripped paint onto huge canvases, while Mark Rothko painted large blocks of flat color.

In the 1960s, Pop Art turned away from serious imagery and used bright, commercial visuals. Andy Warhol used factory-like methods and silkscreen printing to comment on consumer culture and celebrity. Keith Haring used cartoons and graffiti to address social issues, including AIDS activism.

Toward the end of the century, Photorealism arose as a reply to abstract art by making paintings that look like photographs. Minimalism pared art down to its simplest elements, and Conceptual Art said that the idea behind the work matters more than the finished object. Jeff Koons created large sculptures from everyday kitsch, while in Britain the Young British Artists blended Conceptual ideas with Pop and Dada. Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde became a famous example of this late, provocative wave.