Styles of Art
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented what is now known as Analytic Cubism around 1910. The purpose of Cubist art is to share a subject from multiple perspectives at once. Prior to this, post-Renaissance paintings and drawings tried to mimic reality. Cubism shattered the formality of representational art being restricted by reality. Cubist artists imagined shards of different views of a subject rendered into a single image, sometimes as collage. This highly-intentional disruption of time and space introduced abstraction into our collective art history.
This collection of works by living artists draw clear influence from the Cubists, even if not adhering faithfully to the idea of multiple perspectives. See curated Cubism art
Impressionism focuses on communicating the way light and color shift in a setting, rather than emphasizing a subject's form. Beloved by artists and art collectors alike, the raison d'être of Impressionism is to capture a feeling or experience. It emerged in France in the 1860s and quickly became the favorite style of many artists. Famous Impressionists include Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Degas.
Here is a selection of paintings from living artists which are in the impressionist style. Many of these paintings, rich with detail and texture, are available for purchase for a fraction of the price of an old master but bring so much more life to your home or office than a print ever could. See curated Impressionism art
Encompassing many different styles, Post-Impressionists are best defined as a group of artists who reacted to Impressionism by pushing the boundaries of representation further. This group of artists are among the world's most famous: Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Lautrec, and Seurat.
The curated selection of works listed here generally adhere to the styles of the Post-Impressionist period as we think of them. All living artists have been influenced by the Impressionists. See curated Post-Impressionism art
Expressionism, at its core, is about the art coming from within the artist. Instead of observing and conveying a scene or subject, Expressionist artists represent their emotional response to the subject, and sometimes invent both the subject and the emotional response entirely. The classical Expressionist period, started in earnest in Germany, went from 1905 to 1920. Variations in formal movements have recurred — Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and really a tremendous amount of contemporary art. The selection of art categorized as Expressionist on this site is loosely representative of these movements. These curated works evoke emotion but don't fall neatly into other styles of art we've included. See curated Expressionism art
Dadaism was an art movement dedicated to the notion that all of society's moral or aesthetic values were rendered meaningless by WWI. Surrealism, which followed Dadaism, aimed to fill the void of meaninglessness, by trying to document our thought processes. Often leveraging the nascent tools of psychoanalysis, Surrealists explored ideas visually through diverse styles. Famous Surrealist artists include Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, Kahlo, Miró, and Klee.
The curated selection of works seen here evoke Surrealism, either by leveraging the concepts in new styles or by imitation of the famous Surrealists themselves. See curated Surrealism art
