SUB-MOVEMENTS OF EXPRESSIONISM

A. NEOPRIMITIVISM was an art style that incorporated

elements from the native arts of the South Sea Islanders
and the wood carvings of African tribes which suddenly
became popular at that time. Among the Western artists
who adapted these elements was Amedeo Modigliani,
who used the oval faces and elongated shapes of African art
in both his sculptures and paintings.
A Russian art which fuses the elements of cubism
and futurism with body modification
Head
Amedeo Modigliani, c. 1913
Stone

B. FAUVISM was a
derived from les fauves (“wild beasts”), referring to the
group of French expressionist painters who painted in this
style. Perhaps the most known among them was Henri
Matisse.
Highly fashionable, bold use of color, play use of
lines and colors.

Blue Window
Henri Matisse, 1911
Oil on canvas
C. DADAISM was a style characterized by dream
fantasies, memory images, and visual tricks and
surprises—as in the paintings of Marc Chagall
and Giorgio de Chirico below.
Anti-art, anti-war, had political affinities with
the radical left and was also anti-bourgeois
(capitalist).

I and the Village

Marc Chagall, 1911
Oil on canvas

D. SURREALISM was a style

that depicted an illogical,
subconscious dream world
beyond the logical,
conscious, physical one. Its
name came from the term
 “super realism,” with its artworks clearly expressing a departure from reality—
as though the artists were dreaming, seeing illusions, or experiencing an
altered mental state.
Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision,
created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting
techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.

E. SOCIAL REALISM expressed the artist’s role in social reform. Here, artists
used their works to protest against the injustices,
inequalities,Persistence
immorality, and ugliness of the
of Memory
human condition.
SalvadorIn different
Dali, 1931 periods of history,
Oil on canvas
social realists have addressed different issues:
war, poverty, corruption, industrial and
environmental hazards, and more—in the hope of
raising people’s awareness and pushing society to
seek reforms.
Draw attention to the everyday
conditions of the working classes and
the poor, and who are critical of the
social structures that maintain these
conditions
Miners’ Wives
Ben Shahn, 1948
I. ABSTRACTIONISM
Egg tempera on board

Also called non-objective art or non-representational art, painting, sculpture, or graphic

art in which the portrayal of things from the visible world plays no part. All arts consist
largely of elements that can be called abstract—elements of form, color, line, tone, and
texture. Prior to the 20th century, these abstract elements were employed by artists to
describe, illustrate, or reproduce the world of nature and of human civilization—and
exposition dominated over expressive function.

INSPIRATION TECHNIQUE COLOR ORIGIN/ARTISTS

Conceived apart Emphasizing Arbitrary or Piet Mondrian,
from realities or lines, colors and random (done Dutch
specific objects geometric forms without concern) Wassily Kandinsky,
Extension of Distortion of use of color Russian
cubism with its shapes
fragmentation of
the object.

SUB-MOVEMENT OF ABSTRACTIONISM
 A. CUBISM highly influential visual arts style of the 20th century that was created
principally by the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907
and 1914. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture
plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modelling,
and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories that art should imitate nature.
Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space. Instead,
they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects.

Three Musicians
Pablo Picasso, 1921
Oil on canvas
B. FUTURISM Italian Futurismo, Russian Futurism, early 20th-century artistic
movement centred in Italy that emphasized the dynamism,
speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality,
change, and restlessness of modern life. During the second
decade of the 20th century, the movement’s influence
radiated outward across most of Europe, most significantly to
the Russian avant-garde. The most-significant results of the
movement were in the visual arts and poetry.

C. MECHANICAL STYLE the result of futurist

movement. In this style, basic forms such as planes,
cones, spheres and cylinders all fit together perfectly
and precisely with neatness in their appointed places.

The City
Fernand Léger,
1919
Oil on canvas

NONOBJECTIVISM The logical

geometrical conclusion of abstractionism
came in the style known as nonobjectivism.
From the very term “non-object,” works in
this style did not make use of figures or even
representations of figures. They did not refer
to recognizable objects or forms in the
outside world.
Lines, shapes, and colors were used
in a cool, impersonal approach that aimed for
balance, unity, and stability. Colors were

New York City

Piet Mondrian,
1942
Oil on canvas
mainly black, white, and the primaries (red, yellow, and blue).Foremost among the
nonobjectivists was Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

IV. ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Despite this variety, Abstract Expressionist paintings share several broad
characteristics. They often use degrees of abstraction; i.e., they depict forms
unrealistically or, at the
extreme end, forms not
drawn from the visible
world (non-objective).
They emphasize free,
spontaneous, and
personal emotional
expression and they
exercise considerable
freedom of technique
and execution to attain
this goal, with a
particular emphasis laid on
the exploitation of the
variable physical character of paint to evoke expressive qualities (e.g., sensuousness,
dynamism, violence, mystery, and lyricism).
Uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition.