Art Movements: Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism & More

Fauvism

Fauvism, which originated in Paris in 1905, was characterised by its distorted perspective and bright colours. This means that shapes and colours do not necessarily correspond to the objects’ true shapes or colours but reflect the artist’s subjective vision.

Expressionism

Expressionism was a movement originally in painting that focused on the expression of feelings and emotions. The use of broken lines, curved and angular shapes, and vivid, contrasting colours reflected the existential angst of the individual in modern society.

Cubism

Cubism aimed to show all the possible viewpoints of a person or an object all at once, making them look like geometrical shapes. It moved away from perspective and depth that had been used since the Renaissance. The paintings were mostly portraits and still life in the shape of cubes, cylinders and other shapes.

Analytic Cubism (1907-1911)

Analytic Cubism was characterised by the use of geometric planes and a reduction of the colour palette, neutral tones (ochre, beige and brown) and cold tones (blue and grey).

Synthetic Cubism (1911-1914)

Synthetic Cubism incorporated the collage method in which newspaper and other materials were collaged to the surface of the painting.

Futurism

Futurism was founded in Italy by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and incorporated artists such as Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla. It rejected the past and old forms of culture and introduced the power of the machine and advanced technology, symbols of the modern world. Futurists tried to portray speed, dynamism and change in their works by using a new technique, simultaneity, which consisted of showing the same overlapping object repeatedly across a sequence of frames. In 1914, futurism gave rise to Metaphysical art, which depicted a big reality.

Dadaism

Dadaism emerged in 1916 with a creative tool established in art. It was illogical and absurd, a reflection of the self-destructive folly of man during the First World War. The unprecedented conflict caused a great desire for social peace and opened new dimensions of the imagination among artists. Moreover, new technologies (e.g., photography, cinema) led artists to reconsider the function and meaning of art.

Dada artists such as Marcel Duchamp advocated chaos over order and the imperfection of their art, and adopted an anti-rational, provocative attitude with the intention of destroying all conventions.

Abstract Art

Abstraction was the most innovative movement of the 20th century. It rejected figurative art and the representation of reality. It was started by Wassily Kandinsky in 1910, and several geometric abstract movements emerged during the post-war period.

Surrealism

Surrealism was born in Paris in 1924 and was inspired by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis theories. It was characterised by an attempt to capture, through abstract forms and symbolic figures, the deepest reality of the human being: the subconscious.

There were two movements within surrealism:

• Automatism, which reproduced a universe of symbols, sometimes abstract, that emerged from the unconscious (André Masson and Joan Miró).
• Veristic Surrealism, which figuratively recreated strange scenes from the dream world (Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali).

New Objectivity

The terrible situation in Germany after the First World War had an impact on the world of culture and art, and the artists of the 1920s produced tremendously aggressive art charged with a fierce criticism of society and the institutions of power.

This trend revived an Expressionist aesthetic through meticulous attention to detail to show and denounce the atrocities caused by the First World War. The Germans George Grosz and Otto Dix were the most prominent artists of this movement.