Cubism

Cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century. It was created by Pablo Picasso between 1907 and 1914with some credit given to Brague. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes.". The stylization and distortion of Picasso's ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), painted in 1907, came from African art which Picasso had first seen when he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris in 1907.

Cubist painters wanted to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas instead of adhering to the ideas that art should copy nature or adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief-like space. They also used multiple or opposing vantage points.

Cubism wielded a profound influence on twentieth-century sculpture and architecture even though it was associated with painting. The major Cubist sculptors were Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Lipchitz.

Rewald, Sabine. "Cubism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm (October 2004)

Fauve

Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in the early years of the twentieth century. The Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism as well as with older, traditional methods of perception. Their extemporaneous, often individual response to nature was expressed in bold, overt brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colors directly from the tube.
Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) and André Derain (French, 1880–1954) introduced unnaturalistic color and vivid brushstrokes into their paintings in the summer of 1905.

The Fauve painters were a loosely shaped group of artists who shared a parallel approach to nature, but they had no set program. They were led by Matisse, who had come to the Fauve style after experimenting with the various Post-Impressionist styles of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne, and the Neo-Impressionism of Seurat, Cross, and Signac. These influences inspired him to turn from the traditional three-dimensional space and alternately search for a new picture space defined by the movement of color planes.

Rewald, Sabine. "Fauvism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm (October 2004)

Post-Impressionistic

Late in the 1880s, a young group of painters sought to have more independent artistic styles and broke free from the naturalism of Impressionism. Their desire was to expressive more emotions rather than optical illusions. Their work concentrated on deeper themes of symbolism. Simplified colors and definitive forms characterized their art as well a renewed aesthetic sense with abstract tendencies.

The Post-Impressionism painters included Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Georges Seurat (1859–1891), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), and, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). These painters followed various stylistic paths in search of authentic intellectual and artistic achievements. Through their radically independent styles and dedication to pursuing unique means of artistic expression, the Post-Impressionists dramatically influenced generations of artists.

Voorhies, James. "Post-Impressionism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm (October 2004)