Early 20th-Century Avant-Gardes: Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Surrealism, Abstraction
What this domain tests
The early avant-gardes are tested by manifesto plus procedure: each movement can be defined by what it did to the picture surface and to the idea of the artwork. Learn one signature work and one operating rule per movement, and practise attributing an unseen image from formal clues alone.
Core rules and concepts
- Fauvism (1905): colour freed from description (Matisse, Derain); the label comes from the critic Vauxcelles at the Salon d'Automne.
- Cubism: Picasso and Braque from Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907); analytic phase (1909–12) - monochrome, faceted, multiple viewpoints, passage; synthetic phase (1912–14) - collage, papier collé, letters, flat signs; Juan Gris; Delaunay's Orphism.
- Expressionism: Die Brücke (Dresden, 1905; Kirchner) and Der Blaue Reiter (Munich, 1911; Kandinsky, Marc); distorted colour for inner states; Munch as precursor.
- Futurism: Marinetti's manifesto (1909); Boccioni, Balla, Severini; movement, simultaneity, the machine.
- Surrealism: Breton's manifesto (1924); automatism (Miró, Masson) versus veristic dream images (Dalí, Magritte, Tanguy); Dada and Duchamp's readymade as precondition.
- Abstraction: Kandinsky's non-objective painting, Malevich's Black Square (1915), Mondrian and De Stijl.
- Spain: Picasso, Gris, Miró, Dalí, Julio González; Guernica (1937).
Worked example
Prompt: "A 1911 still life shows a bottle broken into overlapping planes, in browns and greys, with stencilled letters. Identify and justify." Reasoning: the monochrome palette, faceted fragmentation, simultaneous viewpoints and stencilled typography are the markers of analytic Cubism at its limit; the letters announce the move towards synthetic collage (1912–14). Answering "Cubism" alone earns little; naming the phase plus three formal proofs earns full marks.
Traps that cost marks
Using "Fauve" for German expressionist colour; confusing Futurist dynamism with Cubist simultaneity; calling Duchamp a Surrealist without mentioning Dada; describing Guernica as Surrealist rather than as Picasso's Cubist-derived history painting; mixing up Kandinsky (Blaue Reiter) with Mondrian (De Stijl).