Bauhaus

A school of architecture and industrial arts, formed in Weimar by the German architect WALTER GROPIUS (1883-1969). Its first manifesto, which owed something to the British arts and crafts movement, emphasized the artist as craftsman; and insisted on the unity of the arts in a building, the elimination of the division between monumental and decorative

Blaue reiter

Meaning ‘The Blue Rider’ (after an almanac of that title), this was the name of an artistic group in Munich headed by Russian artist WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944), and Germans AUGUST MACKE (1887-1914) and FRANZ MARC (1880-1916) who broke away from other Expressionists in the Neue Kunstlervereinung. The group had no precise artistic programme, although

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Body art

Use of the human body as an artistic medium. This method was inspired by exponents of the happening during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and by French artist YVES KLEIN (1928-1962) who employed ‘imprints’ of the female body on canvases. During the 1970s BRUCE McLEAN and VITO ACCONCI pioneered the idea of ordinary facial or

Camera lucida

An optical instrument invented by English physicist and inventor Robert Hooke (1635-1703) in about 1674. In 1807 the English chemist and natural philosopher William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828) developed one of benefit to artists, comprising a four-sided prism of glass with one angle of 90° opposite another of 135° and the remaining two at 67.5°.

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Camera obscura

A mechanical aid for drawing from nature, consisting of lenses and mirrors arranged in a darkened tent. A mirror fixed at an angle of 45° reflects the view through a double convex lens onto a sheet of paper placed at the focus of the lens. Its invention is associated with the Italian architect and

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Caravaggism

A term describing the style and technique of the Italian artist MICHELANGELO da CARAVAGGIO (1573-1610), adopted by artists both in Italy (such as B MANFREDI, ORAZIO GENTILESCHI (1563-1647) and G B CARACCIOLO) and abroad (for instance, JUSEPE de RIBERA (1588-1656), GERARD van HONTHORST (1590-1656) and the ‘Northern Caraviggisti’). These artists were influenced by Caravaggio’s

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Carlo Carra

Italian painter, prominent in the Futurist movement, co-creator of Pitlura metafisica and subsequently a tradition-based realist of peat power. He was trained at the Milan Academy where he met Boccioni. In 1910 he joined him and others in signing the twro manifestos of Futurist painting. His personal manifesto of 1913 called for paintings delivering

Caspar David Friedrich

German painter, born in Greifswald, close to the Baltic Sea, and now famous for, principally, landscapes and seascapes charged with religious symbolism. Friedrich studied at the Copenhagen Academy under Abildgaard and others. From 1798 on, he lived in Dresden, but returned repeatedly to the North coast and travelled also in the mountains of Germany

Chiaroscuro

Meaning ‘bright/ dark’, this term was first used by the Italian art historian FILIPPO BALDINUCCI (c. 1624-1696) to describe paintings which rely on the dramatic effects of contrasting light and shadow in their composition. The foremost exponents of this style were MICHEL ANGELO MERISI CARAVAGGIO (1569-1609) and REMBRANDT (1606-1669). Chiaroscuro (English: /kiˌɑːrəˈsk(j)ʊəroʊ/ kee-AR-ə-SKOOR-oh, -⁠SKEWR-, Italian: [ˌkjaroˈskuːro]; Italian for ‘light-dark’) is one

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Classicism

A term describing adherence to classical ideals of beauty, proportion and symmetry as exemplified in Ancient Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture, most notable during the Renaissance and neoclassical period. The term also refers to any other period or work of art where artist(s) display a preference for order and objectivity over formlessness and

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Claude Monet

French painter, one of the creators of impressionism, in some ways its most steadfast practitioner but also the one who took impressionism into new, contradictory ways to become, in the 1940s, a major influence on abstract expressionism. He was born in Paris, son of a merchant who took his family to Le Havre in 1845. Young Monet

COBRA

An artistic movement formed out of the Danish Spiralen group (Copenhagen), the Belgian Bureau Internationale de Surrealisme Révolutionnaire (Brussels), and the Dutch Experimental Group (Amsterdam). Its adherents had affinities with American action painting in their emphasis of the unconscious and spontaneous. Their works are distinctive for their abstracted compositions, violent brushwork and saturated color. Biology All

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Cold art

From the German Kalte Kunst, this is the name given to a branch of contstructivism based on mathematical principles and formulae. It is related to concrete art. Cold art’s leading practitioner, the Swiss artist MAX BILL (1908- ), saw rationality as the most essential form of thinking and aimed at producing works which were as self-contained and

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Color field painting

A style which developed in the USA, rejecting the gestural and tactile qualities of abstract expressionism. American painters such as ELLSWORTH KELLY (1923- ) and BARNETT NEWMAN (1905-1970) produced large-scale monochromatic canvases whose saturation of color does not suggest form or representation, and which tend to overwhelm the spectator. Color field painting is a style of

Conceptual art

A cerebral approach to art first championed in 1967 by the American sculptor SOL LEWITT (1928- ) in the magazine Art Forum as a reaction against the formalism of post-war art. The idea or concept is the most important aspect in the artistic process. The planning and concept are decided beforehand, but the end result is

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Concrete art

Dutch artist THEO van DOESBURG (1883-1931) coined this name in his manifesto (also signed by CARLSUND, HELION, TUTUNDJIAN and WANTZ) for a distillation of Constructivist ideas aiming to create self-sufficient art, using planes and colors, with no other significance than itself and using controlled and precise techniques. In 1936 the Swiss artist MAX BILL

Constructivism

Russian avant-garde movement pioneered in c.1914 by the artist Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) and current until c.1921. Following the examples of collage in cubism and futurism, Tatlin proposed a ‘culture of materials’ in which illusionism and simulated effects in art were eschewed in favor of an art based on the construction of real materials. After 1917, artistic links with industry were emphasized

Costruzione leggitima

An Italian term meaning ‘legitimate construction’, this refers to a scientific perspective developed by the Italian architect FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI (1377-1446) in order to depict space. It is also described in the treatise DELIA PITTURA (1432) by Italian architect and theorist LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI (1404-1472). The area of the composition is divided into equal zones

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Cubism

This term was first coined by the French critic LOUIS VAUXCELLES in his 1908 review of an exhibition of paintings by Georges Braque (1882-1963). Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1906-1907) by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Braque’s Nude (1907-1908) are now considered to represent the first paintings of Analytical Cubism (c. 1906-1909). Continuing the experiments of French artist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

Dada

With its name chosen at random (being the French word for ‘hobby horse’), this movement first manifested itself in Zurich (c. 1915-1916) with the establishment of the Cabaret Voltaire by German poet and musician HUGO BALL (1886-1927). The movement, which soon spread to other international centres, was a reaction to the horror of war,

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