Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish painter who was the greatest exponent of Baroque paintings. The Flemish or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, Belgium, who speak Dutch. Flemish people make up the majority of Belgians, at about 60%. Rubens was a remarkable individual. Not only was he an enormously successful painter whose workshop … Read more
The term “avant-garde” has a double meaning, denoting first, the historical movements that started in the late nineteenth century and ended in the 1920s and 1930s, and second, the ongoing practices of radical innovation in art, literature, and fashion in the later twentieth century (often inspired by the historical avant-garde and referred to as the … Read more
Paul Jackson Pollock was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his “drip technique” of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles. It was also called all-over painting and action painting, … Read more
Still life is a depiction of inanimate objects for the sake of their qualities of form, colour, texture, and composition. Although decorative fresco murals and mosaics with still-life subjects occasionally appeared in antiquity, it was not until the Renaissance that still life emerged as an independent painting genre, rather than existing primarily as a subsidiary … Read more
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the “matrix” or “support”). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and textures—are … Read more
Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealists, inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theories of dreams and the unconscious—believed insanity was the breaking of the chains of logic, and they represented this idea in their art by creating imagery that was impossible in reality, juxtaposing unlikely forms … Read more
Art Nouveau is an international ornamental art style that characterized architecture, fine art and especially decorative arts across Europe and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The term ‘Art Nouveau’ – literally ‘New Art’ – was first used in the 1880s in the Belgian journal L’Art Moderne to describe the work … Read more
Henri Matisse French painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. His vast oeuvre encompassed painting, drawing, … Read more
A painting is the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface. An artist’s decision to use a … Read more