Anyone who lived through any part of the twentieth century will recognize the name Pablo Picasso, but there are several other artists who had a huge early impact on modern art. The following is a sampling of a few of them that anyone who considers themselves art educated should have at least a passing familiarity with.
Marcel Duchamp was the most well-known of the Dadaist artists, a movement in modern art that championed nonsense and felt that the spectator’s reaction to the artwork was as important to the artistic process as the artist’s intent. He was from France, and did his most commented-upon work in the period between World War One and World War Two, and was best known for his series of “Readymades,” which were ordinary objects he displayed as art. His most famous work is “Fountain,” which was a urinal displayed as art. This piece caused a great deal of controversy at the time after it was rejected from a Society of Independent Artists Exhibit. It was deemed “not art,” which caused a philosophical uproar among artists at the time. His lasting contribution to modern art is his cheeky attitude.
Wassily Kandinsky was from Russia and worked more or less continuously from the turn of the twentieth century right through his death in 1944. He is known as an Expressionist and as an abstract painter. In fact, he’s considered the first abstract painter in modern times. His work features bright, bold colors. Color was an important part of his artistic theory (he was one of the first to consider it an element in painting in its own right apart from representationalism). Kandinsky’s abstract paintings were inspired by music and he referred to them as compositions.
Gustav Klimt was from Austria and was part of the Austrian Symbolist movement. His art was highly eroticized, often featured the female body as its subject, and can be recognized by the use of gold leaf. His two most famous works are “The Kiss” and “Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer.” The works appear like mosaics and have a very modern feel to them, even though they’re almost a century old now.
Piet Mondrian was from the Netherlands and participated in several artistic movements before finding his own unique viewpoint in the mid 1920’s. His work, while fitting under the abstraction umbrella, has a very distinct style that features geometric shapes with right angles (squares and rectangles), thick black lines and the primary colors. His work is clean and bold, and is often imitated even today. Mondrian is widely recognized as an artistic genius, but his impact is felt most today in graphic design.
Salvador Dali was the most famous of the Surrealist painters. Surrealism was a school of art with a whole philosophical manifesto, but its works can be recognized by their odd, dreamlike images. Dali was most active in the 1930’s, and he’s most famous for his images of melting clocks. Surrealism has had lasting effects on art, music, literature and movies.
