Art Movements

Art Movements

(in alphabetical order)

Academic (1560s-NOW)

• Art influenced by the academic standards of mainly western European schools of art.  This style reached its peak in the late 19th century with the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France and the famous Salon of Paris.  Academic art emphasized the human form through Neoclassicism and Romanticism by revisiting the early art masters from the Classical and Italian Renaissance time periods.

Aesthetic (1860s-1890s)

• Beginning in England, artists in the Aesthetic Movement advocated “art for art’s sake”. It came about when society was deep in the conservative Victorian ideals. Aestheticism wanted to explore beauty, creativity, and self-expression, regardless of societal norms and socio-political themes values of the day. This movement was spread throughout all art forms, including visual arts, fashion, music, literature, and interior design.

Art Deco (1920-1939)

• Short for Arts Décoratifs, Art Deco is a decorative and applied art style seen in art, architecture, interior design, jewelry, and many other forms. It was reactionary to the late 19th/early 20th century Art Nouveau. This style was influenced by industrial and machinery technologies and was rigid, using geometric shapes and straight lines.

Art Nouveau (1890-1910)

• A decorative and applied art style seen in lithographs, architecture, interior design, jewelry, and many other forms.  It was reactionary to the 19th century academic art of the Beaux-Arts school of France and sought to incorporate natural forms in art, through curved lines, and floral motifs. The movement spread to Russia, but instead of the floral motifs seen in the French movement, the Russian movement embodied bright colors and folk motifs.

Arts and Crafts (1880-1920s)

• Began in the British Isles before spreading across Europe, North America, and Japan. It was a reaction against the decorative arts coming out of the Industrial Revolution that were seen as vastly deteriorated, mechanical, mass-produced, and lacking the skill and talent of artisans who had previously created everything by hand. These artists focused on organic styles and when possible, used the more archaic means of production.

Azuchi-Momoyama (1574–1600)

• This age was brought on by political unification of the differing provinces in China, which led to an explosion of growth in art and culture. Temples were replaced by castles which were ostentatiously decorated by the leading artists of the day. The Kanō School was an art movement started in the Kanō family, which grew into a formal workshop that outsiders were able to apprentice into. The Kanō family art style was greatly influenced by Chinese painting, which employed a calligraphy type approach to art, using a brush with ink and ink wash, as well as more detailed imagery, to depict landscapes.

Barbizon School of Art (1830-1870)

• The Barbizon school was a group of artists who gathered in Barbizon, France, who used a more naturalistic approach to their work. This was a direct response to the Romantic style that was in vogue at the time and was an important precursor to the Realism art movement. Art from the Barbizon school displays more muted colors, softer brushstrokes, and more rural subjects, critiquing the status quo of French society at that time.

Baroque (1600-early 18th century)

• Part of a larger cultural movement that influenced art, music, and architecture. Associated with the Counter-Reformation movement that spread through western Europe, Baroque artists wanted to illustrate passion and emotion.  It is characterized by intense color, dramatic imagery, and extreme light and shadow (chiaroscuro).

Bengal School of Art (early 20th century – 1920s)

• The Bengal School of Art was founded by the Indian artist, Abanindranath Tagore. This was a nationalistic art movement that helped pave the way to modern art in India. In this school, Indian artists were encouraged to portray themselves in their art as they saw themselves, as opposed to the western view of “Orientalism”. Tagore wanted to modernize Indian art not only to revitalize it, but to compete with the fast-growing popularity of Western art within India. He saw western art as materialistic. Tagore believed it lacked the spiritual depth that was a prominent feature of Indian art.

Biedermeier Style (1815 – 1848)

• During the Biedermeier period, the middle-class grew and prospered and Europe went through a period of political stability. There was a growing urban middle class that wanted to purchase art. The popular art changed to reflect the middle-class and their daily lives. The art of that period was not political and focused instead on the domestic side of life.

Byzantine Art (500s – 1450s)

• A culture and style of art that emerged in the Eastern Orthodox Christian religions after the fall of the Roman Empire. The style was highly symbolic and uniform, and all participants adhered to the expected standardization. Though this limited individual artistic embellishments, it strengthened the art style. Byzantine art was spread throughout a large area from Italy to Russia via trade. The capital was at Constantinople until the city was conquered by the Turks in 1453.

Carolingian Renaissance (768-900)

• The Carolingian period was named after Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, who created a vast empire uniting the majority of western Europe under one rule. The art made during this period is known as the Carolingian Renaissance, and it lasted from the late eighth through the tenth centuries. During this time, there was a concerted effort carried out by monastic centers in places such as Germany, France, and Italy, to create a unified art style inspired by classical Mediterranean art. In addition to increased studying and learning, there was a renewed desire to better represent the human form as in the Greek and Roman times. This helped set the stage for the development of Romanesque and Gothic art.

Danube School of Art (1500-1530)

• An art movement that spread through Bavaria and Austria. The artists of this school were the first to depict pure landscape art, with no human figures in them at all. If there were humans within their landscapes, they were much more expressive than how they were regularly depicted in other schools of art. The ideologies of German humanism spread to this school and is evident in their religious paintings, which reinterpreted traditional iconography with realism, drama, and in the German landscape.

Early Netherlandish (Flemish Primitive) (1420s-1568)

• This was an art movement that occurred in the lowlands of Europe including modern day Belgium, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany. Oil paints were becoming more of a common medium, and the artists of this movement sought to refine their abilities, using oils to depict highly detailed scenes. There was a trend towards more realism in their art, and less stylized figures. More attention was paid to the lighting and shadows of the scene. Both human figures and landscape scenes were more naturalistic. This style change was applied to both portraits and religious iconography.

Expressionism (1905-1925)

• An art style popular during the early 20th century in which artists used exaggerated brushstrokes and visual distortions to convey the artists’ emotional state.  Rather than try to depict the world around them, the artist sought to express how they interpreted the world around them.  Expressionism spread throughout all art forms (literature, theater, music, etc.) and was highly influential in the German art scene.

Folk and Traditional Art (since human inception-now)

• Constantly evolving artistic traditions that are passed down from generation to generation within a community.  This type of art shares an ethnic culture, heritage, and common experiences.

Genre Paintings (1600s-late 1800s)

• Genre paintings depict scenes from daily life. They do not try to relate any moral lesson to the viewer. Rather, genre paintings are intended to share in relatable experiences. This type of art was popular from the Dutch Golden Age to American art.

Golden Age of Illustration (late 1800s-1914)

• With the advent of the printing press, artists were able to mass produce their works for general public consumption. Several illustrators became quite successful and were called on to illustrate hundreds of books.

Gothic (1100-1500s)

• A Medieval school of art and architecture that developed in Northern France before spreading throughout western, central, and eastern Europe. This art form was strictly religious in nature, due to the power of the Roman Catholic Church and focused on lines and overall form.

Group of Seven (1920-1933)

• The Group of Seven, sometimes referred to as the Algonquin School, were a group of Canadian landscape artists who were seeking to create a uniquely Canadian school of art. These artists spent most of their time out in nature painting what they saw. It became a national movement. 

History Painting (15th Century-late 19th Century)

• A subset of the Academic School, the history painting artists aspired to depict large scale paintings with high moral standards. This school of art’s subject matter includes scenes from famous narratives including classical Greek and Roman history, mythology, and the Bible.

Hudson River School of Art (1825-1880s)

• A school of art that depicted the American landscape with Romanticism ideals featuring the picturesque, the pastoral, and the sublime.  The early paintings from this school focused on New York landscapes, but that soon spread to highlighting landscapes of the northeastern United States.

Impressionism (1867-1886)

• Impressionism was a cultural movement of like-minded artists who used visible brushstrokes to manipulate color and texture in an attempt to capture the effects of light on the world around them. After repeatedly being excluded from the Paris Salon for years in a row, the fathers of Impressionism decided to have their first Impressionism art exhibit in 1874 which made them world-renowned.

Insular Art (late 5th-10th century)

• A unique style of art that emerged in Great Britain and Ireland after during the post-roman occupation of the islands. It was created by the Irish monks and spread throughout inhibiting several forms of art (folios, jewelry, etc.). It is intricate, often using spirals, circles, and other geometric designs as well as mythical beasts, animals, and people. 

International Gothic (late 14th-early 15th century)

• An art movement that spread from Burgundy, France to the rest of Western Europe that resulted in a common visual aesthetic for court artists. Illustrated in illuminated manuscripts, secular portraits, stained glass, and religious themes, International Gothic art consists of richly colored and elegantly stylized renditions with natural decorative elements added. A Bohemian variant, known as Weicher Stil., consisted of ornate decorations, with elongated figures, flowing lines, and animals and plants from the natural world rendered in a more realistic way.

Italian Renaissance (14th-16th century)

• The great cultural change which began in Italy that brought Europe from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era.  Humanism ideas were spreading and there was a renewed interest in the art and culture of the Greek and Roman Classical period.  The Renaissance ideal that “man is the measure of all things” influenced art, architecture, politics, literature, and science.

İznik Pottery (15TH-late 16TH CENTURY)

• The workshops of İznik, Turkey began their ceramic production during the 15th century. These workshops are known for their intricate floral designs and rich colors of turquoise and cobalt blue. The kilns produced a wide variety of ceramics including architectural tiles, bowls, pitchers, dishes, lamps, jars, and candlesticks. The artistic styles were originally designed after Chinese porcelain. After the patronage of the Ottoman Court, their style evolved. Their brushstrokes became looser, and they employed a wider variety of colors.

Mannerism (1520-1600)

• Also referred to as “Late Renaissance”. This semi-controversial label is applied to the art style that evolved in Italy after the High Renaissance and before the Baroque school. In this school perspective and scale are used to create the feeling of grandeur with asymmetrical or unbalanced compositions. It is often seen more of an intellectual school that tried to lift itself away from the rules of the natural world.

Mexican Muralism (1920s-1970s)

• This movement was started and funded by the new Mexican government after the Revolution of the early 20th century and was intended to help reunify the country politically as well as socially. Mexico muralism helped breathe new life into this grand style of public art, uniting political commentaries with the modern art world. This style of painting greatly influenced American artists, especially the WPA artists of the 1930s who were traveling the country painting scenes of the Great Depression.

Mughal Painting (mid-1500s TO 1748)

• A style of painting that developed in and during the reign of the Mughal Empire which expanded from modern day northern India to northeastern Pakistan and Bangladesh. The artists of this school produced mostly miniatures for use as illustrations or books or standalone images. This style emerged from Persian miniatures. It was mostly secular in style and exhibited figures with more realism than stylistic representation.

Nabis (1888-1900)

• A group of artists in France who mostly enrolled at the Académie Julian formed a group to support each other and work towards shifting art styles and narratives. They helped bridge the gap between Impressionism and Academic art to more modern and Abstract art. The Nabis were focused with form and color and the meaning and symbolism imbued on them from the artist.

Naturalism (mid 19th century to early 20th century)

• An art movement that started with English landscape painting in the mid-19th century and spread out from there. Artists were trying to get away from the sensational and emotional art of Romanticism and wanted to portray things the way that they were. Naturalist artists saw humans as part of the landscape, subject to all of nature’s forces.

Neoclassicism (1780s-1900)

• Artists were influenced and inspired by the Classical periods of Ancient Rome and Greece and drew upon these styles and cultures for their work.  This has much to do with the Age of Enlightenment and Grand Tour that many young men took part in.

Northern Renaissance (1497-1789)

• The cultural movement that occurred between the Middle Ages and the early Modern Age (~the French Revolution) brought on by the spread of humanism from Italy to north of the Alps.  The Renaissance ideal that “man is the measure of all things” influenced art, architecture, politics, literature, and science.  The printing press helped spread these ideals faster than ever before.  The Northern Renaissance was also heavily influenced by the Protestant Reformation.

Orientalism (1810-1890)

• An aspect of Academic art that imitated the styles of Middle Eastern and Eastern cultures in a highly stereotypical way. It was very popular in the nineteenth century, though it is highly controversial today. It is often regarded as Imperialism in art, depicting fantasy versions of the Eastern cultures as they were being colonized.

Peredvizhniki (1863-1923)

• An art movement in Russia that was their counterpart of the realism movement that was happening in France at the same time.  These artists wanted to protest the rigidity of the academic art school of thought and decided to form their own cooperative to bring art back to the people.  Early on, their art was displayed mostly in traveling shows so they became known as “The Wanderers”.  The most common subject of Peredvizhniki art was the Russian landscape as they wanted to draw attention to the beauty of their own backyards.

Persian Miniature (1300s-1600s)

• Small-scale works of art that were either book illustrations or standalone illustrations that were bound within albums called muraqqas. They are comparable to the miniatures found within illuminated manuscripts. Persian miniatures were usually privately owned and meant to be displayed to a small audience; either just one person or a few people at a time.

Pointillism (1886-early 1900s)

• An art style that developed out of the Impressionism art movement in France by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. The Pointillism technique uses tiny points of color to depict a scene allowing the image to blend in the viewers mind, rather than blending the paint on the canvas. It was one of the first Neo-impressionistic art styles and advanced art into modernism. ​

Portraiture (-present)

• A common art practice to document the likeness of people that is a practice still thriving today.

School of Posillipo (early 1800s-1850)

• A small art movement that took place in the Posillipo neighborhood of Naples, Italy. These artists created more natural landscapes that were sold to tourists who wanted an authentic vision of the places they visited. As Europe was mostly Protestant, the landscapes were in higher demand than religious art. 

Post-Impressionism (1886-1905)

• Began in France as a reaction to the Impressionism art movement and their focus on using only natural colors.  Post-Impressionists used brighter, saturated colors, gave their pieces a more structured form, and used symbology to depict emotional states.

Pre-Raphaelites (1848-early 1900s)

• A brotherhood of artists in England who were inspired by the early Italian and medieval art and the aesthetics of it. Their work focused on rich colors, intense details, and detailed compositions. These artists were opposed to the Royal Academy’s glorification of the work of Raphael and how he changed art into the Mannerism style of the High Renaissance. Pre-Raphaelites saw this as artificial and disliked the Academy’s insistence to teach this style to their students. There were two generations of Pre-Raphaelite artists in the late 19th century.

Rattanakosin Style (1767-present)

• A style of Thai art that was founded by King Rhama I in 1767 when he started the Rattanakosin Kingdom. With the new kingdom, he wanted to recapture the art traditions of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which was destroyed in 1767. This art style is traditionally highly stylized, with bright colors, featuring a flattened perspective, and almost always depicts a subject related to the Buddha. The art style was modernized with each progressive ruler.

Realism (1850s-)

• Began in France after the Revolution of 1848.  Prior to the revolution, the artistic ideals in France were Romanticism displaying emotion, the sublime, and often ideals seen as fantasy in a post-revolution era.  After the French Revolution, artists sought to display real life and the common people.

Rocky Mountain School of Art (1850s-)

• Several artists from the Hudson River School of Art in upstate New York took their artistic endeavors out to the American West.  These artists sought to depict the awesome and grand landscapes of the “Wild West” and the Rocky Mountains using Romanticism ideals featuring the picturesque, the pastoral, and the sublime.

Rococo (1730s-1785)

• Style that began in France before spreading to other parts of western Europe that incorporated all mediums of artistic design.

Romanticism (1760s-late 19th century)

• A reaction to the Industrial Revolution.  Artists focused on individualism and emotion, glorifying nature and wild landscapes through the sublime.  Some Romantic artists focused on mythological aspects.  Romanticism was countered by the Realism movement of the latter half of the 19th century.

Southern School of Landscape Painting (900s-20th century)

• The Southern School of Landscape painting originated in China during the 10th century. It was founded by Dong Yuan, along with his pupil Juran. Also known as the Jiangnan Landscape style. This school typically depicted soft and lush hills with a waterway running through. Instead of strong contour lines, they used soft brushwork, gentle washes, and a more sophisticated perspective. The lines are soft, built up with gentle ink washes or rubbed to smudge the stronger lines. Using a hemp-fiber brush, they used paint strokes to give texture and detail to vegetation and the mountain landscapes.

Skagen Painters (1870s-1900)

• The Skagen Painters were a group of Scandinavian artists who sought to break away from the academic artists and those still practicing from the Dutch Golden Age of Art. They were inspired from the French Impressionism art movement, and sought to break away from academic art. Between the 1870s and 1900, this group of artists formed an artists’ colony in Skagen, the northernmost part of Denmark.

Spanish Renaissance (15th-16th centuries)

• The Renaissance art movement that began in Italy had spread to Spain during this period. This movement was heavily endorsed by the Catholic monarchy to support their political claim. This style used the techniques developed in Italy and utilized the progressive sciences which include a more accurate human anatomy and the use of perspective.

Symbolism (1857-1932)

• Artists were reacting to the realism and naturalism art styles that still had somewhat idealistic tendencies.  Symbolists sought to show the darker, more gritty side of life.  They used symbols to experiment with themes of mysticism, emotions, mortality, and states of mind.  This movement spread from literature to art and film.

Tonalism (1880-1915)

• A style of art developed by American artists in which landscapes are painted within a restricted tone or color palette. This is to provide the viewers with an overall atmospheric mood. Often, the landscapes have a thick mist in the air, lending to soft and muted landscape forms. This style was the result of a blending of the Hudson River School of Art with the Barbizon school.

Tronies (1620s-1672)

• Tronies are an unconventional style of portrait in which people were depicted with exaggerated facial expressions, and often in costume. These portraits were quite popular during the Dutch golden age and Flemish Baroque period. They were bought by wealthy merchants with a healthy sense of humor.

Ukiyo-e (17th-19th century)

• A Japanese art movement of woodblocks and paintings that translates as “pictures of the floating world”. During the Edo period, the economic growth of the merchant class afforded access to luxuries and entertainment, such as the geisha, kabuki theater, and sumo wrestlers.  The Ukiyo-e art captured this new side of life and was proudly displayed within the homes of the now wealthier merchant class.  This style of Japanese art became known in the west as Japonisme and greatly influenced the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists of the late 19th century.

World Exploration (1500s-late 19th century)

• During the “Age of Exploration” or “Age of Discovery”, explorers sailed to new lands around the world searching for land, treasure, and glory.  Many of these adventurers brought artists with them to document the cultures, plant, and animal life that they encountered. This early ethnographic style of art encompassed one culture’s view on another culture.  Some depictions were accurate, though some were not, but the artists’ visions became the publics’ only glimpse of these new worlds as the art made its way back to their homeland.