Futurism

Avant-garde movement founded by the Italian poet and novelist EMILIO FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI (1876-1944). Futurism was inspired by modernity, speed, the machine, the sights and sounds of the 20th century; it was against sentimentalism and history. In art, the first manifesto was followed by the Manifesto of Futurist Painting (1910) and a Technical Manifesto

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Georges Braque

French painter, associated with Picasso in the creation of cubism. Born near Paris, Braque grew up in Le Havre where he attended evening classes in drawing and was apprenticed to a painter-decorator, the profession also of his father and grandfather. From 1900 he was in Paris, pursuing both this and training as an artist, setting

Giorgio de Chirico

Italian painter born in Greece and trained first in engineering – and then as a painter. He studied in Munich and in Paris. From 1915 to 1917 he was in the Italian army. In 1917 he met Carra in the Ferrara army hospital; together they founded Pittura metafisica. He spent some years in the 10s and

Happening

Ultimately related to performances in dada and surrealism, this term was coined by American artist ALLAN KAPROW (1927- ) in 1959. It refers to an assemblage of events which can occur in any environment, according to a plan but without rehearsal, and depending on audience participation for its development (for example, the Fluxus group and body art). History

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Henri Matisse

French painter who studied law and turned to painting when recuperating from an operation in 1890. He studied in Paris under Bouguereau and Moreau, meeting in the latter’s studio Marquet, Rouault and others, and then also under Carriere, meeting Derain. He began to send paintings to open exhibitions in 1896. In 1897, he met

Hogarth’s line

A term introduced by the English painter WILLIAM HOGARTH (1697-1764). The so-called line of beauty is a graceful curve, proposed as the foundation of all good artistic design. Line of beauty is a term and a theory in art or aesthetics used to describe an S-shaped curved line (a serpentine line) appearing within an object, as the boundary line of an

Humanism

(15th-16th century) A formal term applied in the 19th century to the re-emergence and synthesis of classical thought during the Renaissance. Although evident in Petrarch’s studies of classical texts in the 14th century, it was particularly during the 15th century (in Florence, Venice and Naples) that scholars’ rediscovery of classical civilization and literature led

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Idealization

The theory that art not only reproduces nature, but perfects and improves upon it. Since Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Plato (c.427-c.347 BC) there have been accounts of artists who reveal beauty in nature through their own work. The neo-Platonists revived Plato’s Theory of Ideas, in which objects are imperfect copies which relate to a doctrine of Ideas and

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Ideoplastic

Coined by MAX VORWORM, this term refers to a type of representation which derives from the artist’s knowledge of a subject and not from direct observation or memory of an object. Applied specifically to the study of chil-drens’ and primitive peoples’ schematic drawings, the theory has been contested by GESTALT psychologists who argue that

Illusionism

The use of pictorial techniques such as perspective and foreshortening to deceive the eye into believing that what is painted is real. Popular in the Hellenistic period, especially in the painted fictive architecture at Pompeii, the technique was revived by Italian painter ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506) in his ceiling for the Camera degli Sposi (1474)

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Imagism

A term coined by H H ARNASON in reference to the exhibition held at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in 1961 entitled ‘American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists’. It referred to the work produced by artists contemporary with the Abstract Expressionists whose style was not expressionist, and is sometimes described as ‘hard edge’. Imagism was a

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Impressionism

Originally a derogatory name given to a broad movement which emerged in Paris on the occasion of an independent exhibition in 1874. The name was suggested by one of the exhibits: Impression: Sunrise (1872) by French painter CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926). Although no manifesto for their theories was formulated, the Impressionists’ aim was to achieve

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Jacques Louis David

Great and complex French painter. He oscillated between baroque Rubenisme and classicizing Poussisme, and may be said to have at last reconciled these tendencies in French art. We can think of him as the last major 18th-century painter or as the originator of 19th-century art. His working life fell into quite distinct phases: ancient

Joseph Mallord William Turner

English painter, now considered one of the most remarkable of 19th-century artists. Son of a London barber, he drew from childhood and entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 14. At 15, he showed a watercolor in the Academy exhibition, and at 16 he began touring around Britain recording buildings and natural

Jungian aesthetics

The theories of art proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) are concerned with the artist’s use of archetypes, either consciously or unconsciously. His assumption was that all artists are driven to creativity (which he deemed feminine) by their involvement with the Mother archetype. The experience of Jungian analysis prompted American painter JACKSON

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Kalte kunst

Career Gerstner attended Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel.[1] From 1944 to 1948, Gerstner apprenticed as a typographer for artist Fritz Bühler’s studio, alongside graphic designer Armin Hofmann, in Basel, Switzerland.[1] His supervisor at Bühler’s studio, Max Schmid, later went on to work at the Geigy chemical company. In 1949, Gerstner began freelancing for Geigy after Schmid recruited him.[1] In 1958, he and Markus

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Kasimir Malevich

Russian painter, born near Kiev and trained there and in Moscow. He associated with Larionov and Goncharova, participating in their 1910-1912 exhibitions and sharing their interest in primitivism. He had worked in symbolist and impressionist ways; now he developed a folk-art-based style of dynamic, simplified forms and strong colors for representations of peasants that look iconic and may be

Kinetic art

Term first used in connection with the Realistic Manifesto (1920) of Russian brothers Naum Gabo (1890-1977) and ANTOINE PEVSNER (1886-1962), but applied more frequently to a range of art styles current in the 1950s. These include: styles in which optical illusions and visual ambiguity are emphasized, promoting instability in the spectator; objects whose appearance changes as

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Land art

First conceived at the exhibition at the Dwan Gallery (1968), this movement is related to environment art and earth works. It rejects modern commercialization, embracing instead ecological issues through the creation of art in and with nature. Typical of this conceptual movement are the geometric arrangements in the landscape by British artist RICHARD LONG (1945- ) (for

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Lettrism

A Paris-based movement founded by Romanian-French poet ISIDORE ISOU (1925- ), who proposed incorporating letters, numerals and non-Western calligraphy into painting; fusing art with poetry to create a music of letters. Other members included G POMERAND, M LEMAITRE and R SABATIER. The Lettrism [or Letterism], founded in 1946 by Isidore Isou and Gabriel Pomerand, uses letters as “sounds” and

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