Modern and Contemporary

Cubism

Objects are broken into geometric facets and shown from several sides at once.

💡 Did you know? The name was coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who saw only little cubes in Braque’s landscapes.

Futurism

Painters such as Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla tried to make movement itself visible.

💡 Did you know? Marinetti wrote that a roaring racing car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

Suprematism

Pure geometric forms on a white ground were meant to show the supremacy of pure feeling.

💡 Did you know? At the exhibition Malevich hung the picture high in the corner of the room, where an icon hangs in Russian homes.

Dada

Hugo Ball recited sound poems without words there, and Hans Arp let scraps of paper fall at random.

💡 Did you know? The origin of the name is disputed; according to legend, someone opened a dictionary at random.

Constructivism

Tatlin’s leaning tower of steel and glass was meant to be taller than the Eiffel Tower but was never built.

💡 Did you know? Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky belonged to it too, designing posters, books and photographs.

De Stijl

Only vertical and horizontal lines were allowed, with the primary colours red, yellow and blue plus black, white and grey.

💡 Did you know? Mondrian broke with van Doesburg when the latter introduced diagonal lines.

Bauhaus

Teachers such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger combined art, craft and industry.

💡 Did you know? In 1933 the teachers dissolved the school themselves in Berlin under pressure from the Nazis.

New Objectivity

The name came from an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925.

💡 Did you know? In 1937 the Nazis showed many of these works as “degenerate art”.

Surrealism

Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Max Ernst painted pictures full of puzzling dream logic.

💡 Did you know? The poet Guillaume Apollinaire had already coined the name in 1917.

Abstract Expressionism

Pollock laid the canvas on the floor and let paint drip and run onto it.

💡 Did you know? The artists around Pollock were also called the New York School.

Pop art

It emerged in Britain in the 1950s and became famous in the United States in the 1960s.

💡 Did you know? Warhol called his New York studio “The Factory” and had screen prints made there almost on an assembly line.

Op art

In 1965 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the much-discussed exhibition “The Responsive Eye”.

💡 Did you know? Bridget Riley at first painted her pictures only in black and white.

Minimalism

The works were meant to depict nothing and express nothing, but simply to be themselves.

💡 Did you know? Carl Andre’s brick piece “Equivalent VIII” sparked a scandal in London in 1976 over wasted public money.

Fluxus

It sought to join art and life, mixing music, happenings and everyday actions.

💡 Did you know? The name is Latin and means “flowing”.

Land art

The 1970 spiral of basalt rock and earth is about 460 metres long.

💡 Did you know? Depending on the water level, it vanishes into the lake for years and then reappears.

Street art

Besides graffiti it uses stencils, posters, stickers and mosaics.

💡 Did you know? In 2018 Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” partly shredded itself right after being sold at Sotheby’s.