Isabella Flores
The early 1900s saw a diverse range of artistic movements and styles emerge, with artists experimenting with new ways of understanding the physical world through their art. Traditional painting during this period was influenced by scientific advancements and political turbulence, with artists such as Marsden Hartley and Georges Braque employing abstract shapes and symbols to represent their surroundings. Landscape painting remained a popular subject, with artists like Nils Kreuger and Theodore Casimir Roussel capturing the beauty of nature in their respective regions. The early 20th century also witnessed the development of American Realism, with artists like Norman Rockwell creating detailed visual timelines of American history.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Dominant style in Europe | Neoclassicism |
| Popular subjects | History painting, portraiture, genre painting, landscapes, still life |
| Art movements | Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Symbolist movement, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Divisionism |
| Notable artists | Henri Matisse, Norman Rockwell, Xu Beihong, Aaron Douglas, Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish, Emily Carr |
| Techniques | Thin glazes of pigment on a wet white ground, woodcut prints |
| Colours | Bright, bold |
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What You'll Learn
Impressionism
The Impressionists constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, inspired by the painters Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They painted realistic scenes of everyday life in natural settings, often outdoors, attempting to capture a moment in time. They focused on natural light, movement, and moments, and the play of natural light and reflection of colours was emphasised. They also often included factories in their landscapes, a departure from earlier landscape painters who avoided signs of industrialization.
The Impressionists' dealer, Durand-Ruel, played a significant role in popularising Impressionism by keeping their work before the public and arranging shows in London and New York. By the early 1880s, Impressionist methods had influenced Salon art, and the movement had also spread to the United States, with American painters such as William Merritt Chase and Mary Cassatt adopting the style.
While the Impressionist group began to dissolve by the early 1880s, its short existence had a profound impact on the history of art, inspiring later artists like Cézanne, Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Vincent van Gogh, and the Post-Impressionist movement.
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Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionist artists sought to move beyond the limitations of Impressionism, which they felt lacked structure and trivialised the subject matter. They prioritised abstract form and pattern, and their early experiments with abstraction influenced modernist movements of the early 20th century, such as Cubism and Fauvism. Post-Impressionists also retained the vibrant colours of Impressionism while exploring more ambitious expressions and emotional representations.
One of the key figures in Post-Impressionism was Paul Cézanne, often referred to as the father of the movement. Cézanne aimed to bring structure and solidity to Impressionism, reducing objects to their basic shapes. Another notable Post-Impressionist was Georges Seurat, who, along with his followers, developed the technique of Pointillism, creating images from tiny dots of colour. Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were also important figures in the movement, each developing their own highly personal artistic styles.
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Primitivism
In the early 1900s, Primitivism was a trend among modern artists in Europe and America who looked to the past and to non-Western cultures for artistic inspiration, in response to increasing industrialization and urbanization. The term "Primitivism" refers to the appreciation and imitation of cultural products and practices perceived to be "primitive", or at an earlier stage of a supposed common scale of human development. This definition contains a basic contradiction: the primitive is admired and seen as a model, but it is also presumed to be inferior due to its lack of development.
One of the most influential artists associated with Primitivism is Paul Gauguin, a late-19th-century French painter who incorporated Tahitian imagery and themes into his oil paintings. Gauguin's works often featured natural elements, outdoor settings, and nude women, and they combined multiple cultural traditions, including South Asian, Egyptian, and Oceanic influences. Gauguin's artistic primitivism was part of the "dense interweave of racial and sexual fantasies and power, both colonial and patriarchal", invented by French colonialists about Tahiti and its people. Gauguin's paintings of Tahitians as "noble savages" in an idyllic natural setting contributed to racist stereotypes that justified colonial rule.
Another prominent artist influenced by Primitivism is Pablo Picasso, who began collecting African artwork after seeing African masks exhibited in Paris in 1907. Picasso incorporated formal qualities of African masks, such as ovoid-shaped faces and angular features, into his paintings, such as "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon". This exploration of Primitive art led Picasso to develop his analytic Cubist style, which integrated form and space and abandoned Renaissance spatial illusionism.
While Primitivism contributed to some of modern art's most successful works, it is now recognized as a highly problematic concept that perpetuated racist stereotypes and involved cultural appropriation. The term "primitive art" to describe African, Oceanic, and Native American art has fallen out of favour, and the movement's intellectual and moral complexities are increasingly recognized.
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Symbolism
Symbolist painters rejected the conventions of Naturalism, Realism, and Impressionism, which focused on objective representations of reality. Instead, they embraced artistic freedom and creativity, constructing their own imaginative universes. Symbolist art often featured mysterious figures, mythical creatures, and fantastical dream worlds, exploring themes such as love, fear, anguish, loneliness, death, and unrequited desire. The female figure became a favoured symbol, representing both wistful virgins and menacing femmes fatales.
The roots of Symbolism can be traced back to the French literary movement of the 1880s, led by poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Jean Moréas. Moréas published the Symbolist manifesto in 1886, advocating for pure subjectivity and the expression of ideas over realistic descriptions. This philosophy extended into the visual arts, with painters like Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Gustave Moreau, James Whistler, and Odilon Redon becoming key figures in the Symbolist movement.
Symbolist paintings often featured distorted forms, expressive colours, and fluid brushwork to convey intense emotions and psychological states. Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (1893) is a prime example, depicting fin-de-siècle feelings of isolation and anguish. Symbolism also overlapped with other artistic styles, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, modernism, synthetism, and ingenuism, reflecting the diverse and experimental nature of the period.
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Expressionism
Expressionist painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse used expressive colours and brushwork to convey emotions and experiences, moving away from realistic depictions. Other notable expressionist painters include Georges Rouault of France, Paul Klee of Switzerland, Oskar Kokoschka of Austria, and Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde of Germany. Austrian painters Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka were particularly influenced by their predecessor Gustav Klimt and sought to express the decadence of modern Austria through representations of the human body that incorporated sinuous lines, garish colours, and distorted figures.
Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer of abstraction in modernist art, founded the Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") group in Munich in 1911, which became one of the earliest formal groups of expressionist artists. Kandinsky's work evolved from realistic and organic to geometric and abstract, and his piece 'Der Blaue Reiter' is considered a famous example of expressionist art. Another important expressionist painter was Edvard Munch, whose work 'The Scream' is considered one of the most iconic modern art pieces in the world, embodying the angst and anxiety of the early modernist era.
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Frequently asked questions
Some examples of traditional paintings from the early 1900s include:
- "The Maize Barge, Woodbridge" by Walter J. Hall
- "View of the River" by Octave Linet
- "Landscape View from Öland, Sweden" by Nils Kreuger
- "The Hague" by Frantisek Novotnik
- "Golden Brown Painting" by Arshile Gorky
Common subjects of traditional paintings from the early 1900s include landscapes, still life, and portraits. Some common themes include exploring modern contexts, wartime Europe, and political turbulence.
Notable traditional painters from the early 1900s include Norman Rockwell, Xu Beihong, Aaron Douglas, Marsden Hartley, Georges Braque, and Alphonse Mucha.
