2. • In the early 1900s, there arose in the Western art world a movement
that came to be known as expressionism. Expressionist artists
created works with more emotional force, rather than with realistic or
natural images. To achieve this, they distorted outlines, applied
strong colors, and exaggerated forms. They worked more with their
imagination and feelings, rather than with what their eyes saw in the
physical world.
• Among the various styles that arose within the expressionist art
movements were:
neoprimitivism
fauvism
dadaism
surrealism
social realism
3. • 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.
Name: Amedeo Clemente Modigliani
Born: 12 July 1884
Livorno, Tuscany, Italy
Died: 24 January 1920 (aged 35)
Paris, France
Nationality: Italian
Education: Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence
Known for Painting, sculpture
Notable work: Redheaded Girl in Evening Dress
Madame Pompadour
Jeanne Hébuterne in Red Shawl
5. Fauvism was a style that used bold vibrant colors and
visual distortions. Its name was drived 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.
Name: Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse
Born : 31 December 1869
Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord
Died: 3 November 1954 (aged 84)
Nice, Alpes-Maritimes
Nationality: French
Education: Académie Julian, William-Adolphe
Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau
Notable work: Woman with a Hat, 1905
Nu bleu, 1907
La Danse, 1909
7. • Dadaism was a style characterized by dream fantasies,
memory images, and visual tricks and surprises—as in
the paintings ofMarc Chagall and Giorgio de Chirico
below. Although the works appeared playful, the
movement arose from the pain that a group of European
artists felt after the suffering brought byWorld War I.
Wishing to protest against the civilization that had
brought on such horrors, these artists rebelled against
established norms and authorities, and against the
traditional styles in art. They chose the child’s term for
hobbyhorse, dada, to refer to their new “non-style.”
8. Melancholy and
Mystery of a
Street
Giorgio de Chirico,
1914
Oil on canvas
I and the Village
Marc Chagall,
1911
Oil on canvas
9. • 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
fromreality—as though the artists were dreaming, seeing
illusions, or experiencing an altered mental state.
Persistence of
Memory
Salvador Dali,
1931
Oil on canvas
10. • Many surrealist works depicted morbid or gloomy
subjects, as in those by Salvador Dali. Others were quite
playful and even humorous, such as those by Paul Klee
and Joan Miro.
Diana
Paul Klee, 1932
Oil on wood
Personages with Star
Joan Miro, 1933
Oil on canvas
11. • The movement known as social realism.expressed the
artist’s role in social reform. Here, artists used their works
to protest against the injustices, inequalities, immorality,
and ugliness of the human condition. In different periods
of history, 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. Ben
Shahn’s Miners’ Wives, for example, spoke out against
the hazardous conditions faced by coal miners, after a
tragic accident killed 111workers in Illinois in 1947,
leaving their wives and children in mourning.
12. Miners’ Wives
Ben Shahn, 1948
Egg tempera on
board
Guernica
Pablo Picasso,
1937
Oil on canvas
(Size: 11’ 5 1/2” x
25’ 5 3/4”)
13. • Pablo Picasso’s Guernica has been recognized as the
most monumental and
• comprehensive statement of social realismagainst the
brutality of war. Filling onewall of the Spanish Pavilion at
the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, it was Picasso’s outcry
against the German air raid of the town of Guernica in his
native Spain. Created in the mid-1900s, Guernica
combined artistic elements developed in the earlier
decades with those still to come. It made use of the
exaggeration, distortion, and shock technique of
expressionism. At the same time, it had elements of the
emerging style that would later be known as cubism.
