Photoshop Online

Designers and photographers have a number of options when it comes to photo editing. Of course, Photoshop is the most popular software. What about The Photoshop online? Adobe offers a free, online version of Photoshop with scaled down features that include those needed for basic...

Symbolism

Symbolism Key Dates: 1885-1910 Symbolism began as a reaction to the literal representation of subjects preferring to create more suggestive and evocative works. It had its roots in literature with poets such as Baudelaire believing ideas and emotions could be conveyed not only through the meaning...

Surrealism

Surrealism Key Dates: 1920-1930 A literary and art movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited its anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was lighter in spirit than that movement. Like Dada,...

Suprematism

Suprematism Key Dates: 1913- Russian art movement founded (1913) by Casimir Malevich in Moscow, parallel to constructivism. Malevich drew Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky (1890-1947) to his revolutionary, nonobjective art. In Malevich’s words, suprematism sought “to liberate art from the ballast...

Situationism

Situationism Key Dates: 1957-1972 They originated in a small band of avante-garde artists and intellectuals influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Lettrism. The post-war Lettrist International, which sought to fuse poetry and music and transform the urban landscape, was a direct forerunner of the group...

Romanticism

Romanticism Key Dates: 1800-1880 Romanticism was basically a reaction against Neoclassicism, it is a deeply-felt style which is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought. Although Romanticism and Neoclassicism were philosophically opposed, they were the dominant European styles...

Rococo

Rococo Key Dates: 1700- Throughout the 18th century in France, a new wealthy and influential middle-class was beginning to rise, even though the royalty and nobility continued to be patrons of the arts. Upon the death of Louis XIV and the abandonment of Versailles, the Paris high society became the...

Renaissance

Renaissance Key Dates: 1300- This movement began in Italy in the 14th century and the term, literally meaning rebirth, describes the revival of interest in the artistic achievements of the Classical world. Initially in a literary revival Renaissance was determined to move away from the religion-dominated...

Realism

RealismKey Dates: 1830-1870 Realism, also known as the Realist school, was a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved...

Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-RaphaelitesKey Dates: 1848-1920 This movement was originally founded in 1848 by Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. The name was decided upon as the group aimed to rediscover the painting styles of artists working earlier than the time of Raphael. The group, initially comprising Rossetti, his...

Post-Modernism

Post-ModernismKey Dates: 1960-present The name given to a wide range of cultural phenomena, to characterise a move away from the ‘highbrow’ seriousness of modernism, preferring a more eclectic and populist approach to creativity. The term came into common use in the 1970s. It is used both as a ‘stylistic’...

Post Impressionism

Post ImpressionismKey Dates: 1880-1920 Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style’s inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such...

Pop Art

Pop ArtKey Dates: 1950-1960 This movement was marked by a fascination with popular culture reflecting the affluence in post-war society. It was most prominent in American art but soon spread to Britain. In celebrating everyday objects such as soup cans, washing powder, comic strips and soda pop bottles,...

Pointilism

PointilismKey Dates: 1890-1900 This movement developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance. The equal size dots never quite merge in the viewer’s perception resulting in a shimmering effect like...

Photorealism

PhotorealismKey Dates: 1960-1970 A figurative movement that emerged in the United States and Britain in the late 1960s and 1970s. The subject matter, usually everyday scenes, is portrayed in an extremely detailed, exacting style. It is also called superrealism, especially when referring to sculptu...

Op Art

Op ArtKey Dates: 1960- Op Art or Optical Art is the term used to describe paintings or sculptures which seem to swell and vibrate through their use of optical effects. The movement’s leading figures were Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely who used patterns and colours in their paintings to achieve a...

Neo-Expressionism

Neo-ExpressionismKey Dates: 1980- A diverse art movement that dominated the art market in Europe and the United States during the early and mid-1980s. Neo-Expressionism comprised a varied assemblage of young artists who had returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects, in reaction...

Neo-Classical

Neo-ClassicalKey Dates: 1750-1880 A nineteenth century French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of country....

Naive Art

Naive Art Artwork, usually paintings, characterized by a simplified style, nonscientific perspective, and bold colors. The artists are generally not professionally trained. Henri Rousseau and Grandma Moses worked in this style. Representative Artists:Henri RousseauGrandma Mo...

Nabis

NabisKey Dates: 1888-1899 A Parisian group of Post-Impressionist artists and illustrators who became very influential within the field of graphic art. Their emphasis on design was shared by the parallel Art Nouveau movement. Both groups also had close ties to the Symbolists. The core of Les Nabis was...

Modernism

ModernismKey Dates: 1890-1940 Modernism was characterised by the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. Modernism refers to this period’s interest in...

Minimalism

MinimalismKey Dates: 1962- Minimal Art emerged as a movement in the 1950s and continued through the Sixties and Seventies. It is a term used to describe paintings and sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both content and form, and seek to remove any sign of personal expressivity. The aim of Minimalism...

Medieval & Gothic

Medieval & GothicKey Dates: 400AD- Medieval – A highly religious art beginning in the 5th Century in Western Europe. It was characterised by iconographic paintings illustrating scenes from the bible. Gothic – This style prevailed between the 12th century and the 16th century in Europe. Mainly an...

Massurrealism

MassurrealismKey Dates: 1992- Coined by the American Artist James Seehafer in 1992 the expression Massurrealism stands for a fusion of the dream like visions of surrealism, pop art and New Media Technology – as well as for an expression of the Hyper-real. Starting as a grass roots art style it started...

Mannerism

MannerismKey Dates: 1520-1600 Artists of the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance developed their characteristic styles from the observation of nature and the formulation of a pictorial science. When Mannerism matured after 1520(The year Raphael died), all the representational problems had been...

Indian River School

Indian River SchoolKey Dates: 1950- Influenced in the late fifties and early sixties by the great Florida naturalist, A.E. “Beanie” Backus, the black artists, along with others, used canvasboard, upson board, masonite and canvas to paint on creating dramatically powerful, yet serene, “Florida scapes”. This...

Impressionism

ImpressionismKey Dates: 1867-1886 A French 19th century art movement which marked a momentous break from tradition in European painting. The Impressionists incorporated new scientific research into the physics of colour to achieve a more exact representation of colour and tone. The sudden change in...

Hudson River School

Hudson River SchoolKey Dates: 1825-1875 The name given to a number of American landscape painters working between 1825-1875, inspired by their pride in the beauty of their homeland. The three founders, and probably the most important figures were Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty and Asher B Durand. The patriotic...

Harlem Renaissance

Harlem RenaissanceKey Dates: 1920-1930 From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African-Americans occurred in all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New...

Group of Seven

Group of SevenKey Dates: 1911-1931 The Group of Seven Artists began in the early 1900s when several Canadian Artists began noticing a similarity in style. Canadian Painters Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael were often believed to have...

Graffiti Art

Graffiti ArtKey Dates: 1980- This was a movement which achieved an enormous amount of success in New York in the 1980s. It was named after the spray-can vandalism common in most cities and most associated with the New York subway system. The two most successful figures of this movement were Jean-Michel...

Gothic

GothicKey Dates: 1200-1600 This style prevailed between the 12th century and the 16th century in Europe. Mainly an architectural movement, Gothic was characterised by its detailed ornamentation most noticeably the pointed archways and elaborate rib vaulting. First developed in France, Gothic was intended...

Futurism

FuturismKey Dates: 1909-1944 An Italian avant-garde art movement that took speed, technology and modernity as its inspiration, Futurism portrayed the dynamic character of 20th century life, glorified war and the machine age, and favoured the growth of Fascism.The movement was at its strongest from 1909,...

Folk Art

Folk ArtWorks of a culturally homogeneous people without formal training, generally according to regional traditions and involving craf...

Fluxus

FluxusKey Dates: 1960-1965 The Fluxus movement emerged in New York in the 60's, moving to Europe, and eventually to Japan. The movement encompassed a new aesthetic that had already appeared on three continents. That aesthetic encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen,...

Flemish School

Flemish SchoolKey Dates: 1500-1600 Characterised by idealism and experimentation with perspective, Flemish Art thrived in the 15th century with artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Dirk Bouts. They specialised in portrait painting with religious themes and complicated...

Fauvism

FauvismKey Dates: 1905-1908 The first of the major avant-garde movements in European 20th century art, Fauvism was characterised by paintings that used intensely vivid, non-naturalistic and exuberant colours. The style was essentially expressionist, and generally featured landscapes in which forms were...

Expressionism

ExpressionismKey Dates: 1905-1925 A term used to denote the use of distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect, which first surfaced in the art literature of the early twentieth century. When applied in a stylistic sense, with reference in particular to the use of intense colour, agitated brushstrokes,...

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue ReiterKey Dates: 1911- Formed in response to the increasing conservatism of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (NKV), the Blaue Reiter’s aim was simply to ensure exhibition space for artist’s dedicated to unrestricted freedom of expression. The name derived from a drawing by Wassily Kandinsky that...

De Stijl

De StijlKey Dates: 1917-1931 An art movement advocating pure abstraction and simplicity– form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and colour to the primary colours, along with black and white. Piet Mondrian (Netherlandish, 1872-1944) was the group’s leading figure. He published a manifesto...

Dada

DadaKey Dates: 1916-1920 An international movement among European artists and writers between 1915 and 1922, characterised by a spirit of anarchic revolt. Dada revelled in absurdity, and emphasised the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation.It began in Zürich with the French poet Tristan Tzara...

Cubism

CubismKey Dates: 1908-1914 The Cubist art movement began in Paris around 1907. Led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the Cubists broke from centuries of tradition in their painting by rejecting the single viewpoint. Instead they used an analytical system in which three-dimensional subjects were fragmented...

Constructivism

ConstructivismKey Dates: 1915-1940 Constructivism was an invention of the Russian avant-garde that found adherents across the continent. Germany was the site of the most Constructivist activity outside of the Soviet Union (especially as home to Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus, a progressive art and design...

Conceptual Art

Conceptual ArtKey Dates: 1960-1970 A movement of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized the artistic idea over the art object. It attempted to free art from the confines of the gallery and the pedestal....

Colour Field

Colour FieldKey Dates: 1950- A technique in abstract painting developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Newman, Rothko, and Frankenthaler painted in this manner....

Bloomsbury Group

Bloomsbury GroupKey Dates: 1904- The Bloomsbury group was basically a group of like minded friends with a ‘common attitude to life’, many of whom had first met at Trinity College, Cambridge at the turn of the century. From 1904 onwards they met regularly at the Gordon Square home of Thoby Stephen in...

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain CollegeKey Dates: 1933-1950 In the middle of the 20th Century a small town in North Carolina became a hub of American cultural production. The town was Black Mountain and the reason was Black Mountain College. Founded in 1933, the school was a reaction to the more traditional schools...

Bauhaus

BauhausKey Dates: 1919-1930 A school of art, design and architecture founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style is characterized by its severely economic, geometric design and by its respect for materials. The Bauhaus school was created when Walter Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar...

Baroque

BaroqueKey Dates: 1600- Baroque Art emerged in Europe around 1600, as an reaction against the intricate and formulaic Mannerist style which dominated the Late Renaissance. Baroque Art is less complex, more realistic and more emotionally affecting than Mannerism. This movement was encouraged by the Catholic...

Ashcan School

Ashcan SchoolKey Dates: 1891-1918 A group of urban realist painters in America creating work around the early part of 20th century. The group, founded by the artist and teacher Robert Henri, began its activities in Philadelphia around 1891. Henri attracted a gathering of newspaper illustrators–George...

Art Nouveau

Art NouveauKey Dates: 1800- This describes a decorative style popular from the last decade of the 19th century to the beginning of the First World War. It was characterised by an elaborate ornamental style based on asymmetrical lines, frequently depicting flowers, leaves or tendrils, or in the flowing...

Art Deco

Art DecoKey Dates: 1920-1930 An art movement involving a mix of modern decorative art styles, largely of the 1920s and 1930s, whose main characteristics were derived from various avant-garde painting styles of the early twentieth century. Art deco works exhibit aspects of Cubism, Russian Constructivism...

Art & Crafts Movement

Art & Crafts MovementKey Dates: –1850 The Victorian style of heavily ornamented interiors displaying many pieces of furniture, collections of small ornamental objects, and surfaces covered with fringed cloths prevailed in middle-class homes in England and America during the latter half of the 19th...

Ancient & Classical Art

Ancient & Classical ArtKey Dates: 15000BC-450AD Ancient – There are few remaining examples with early art often favouring drawing over colour. Work has been found recently in tombs, Egyptian frescoes, pottery and metalwork. Classical – Relating to or from ancient Roman or Greek architecture and...

Action Art

Action ArtThis term, first coined by Harold Rosenberg, refers to the dribbling, splashing or otherwise unconventional techniques of applying paint to a canvas. Connected to the Abstract Expressionist movement, but more precise in its meaning, Action Painting believes in the expressive power held in...

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract ExpressionismKey Dates: 1940-1960 Emerging in the 1940s in New York City and flourishing in the Fifties, Abstract Expressionism is regarded by many as the golden age of American art. The movement is marked by its use of brushstrokes and texture, the embracing of chance and the frequently massive...

Classicism

ClassicismKey Dates: Late 1800-1900 This is a movement that can be defined by its attention to traditional forms concentrating on elegance and symmetry. It takes the art of the Greeks and Romans as its idea of perfection. Developing in Rome in the late 15th century, the classical style was widespread...

Barbizon School

Barbizon School Key Dates: 1840-1870An association of French landscape painters, c. 1840-70, who lived in the village of Barbizon and who painted directly from nature. Theodore Rousseau was a leader; Corot and Millet were also associated with the group. Representative Artists:Theodore RousseauCorotMillet...

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, the daughter of the German photographer Guillermo Kahlo (who had emigrated to Mexico) and a Mexican mother. In 1923 she began studying medicine and joined the ‘Liga de la Juventud Communista’. A year later she met Diego...

Roy Lichtenstein

  Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York where he studied at the Art Students League in 1939. From 1940 to 1949 he studied at Ohio State University, Columbus, interrupted for three years (1943 to 1946) with service in the US Army. After a brief spell teaching at Columbus, Lichtenstein...

Borneo Traditional Tattoo

Tattooing has been a Eurasian practice since Neolithic times. "Ötzi the Iceman", dated c. 3300 BC, bore 57 separate tattoos: a cross on the inside of the left knee, six straight lines 15 centimeters long above the kidneys and numerous small parallel lines along the lumbar, legs...

Fernando Botero Angulo

Fernando Botero Angulo (born April 19, 1932) is a Colombian figurative artist. His works feature a figurative style, called by some "Boterismo", which gives them an unmistakable identity. Botero depicts women, men, daily life, historical events and characters, milestones of art,...

List of Museums in Eastern Hemisphere

China Beijing museums India Indian Museum (unofficial), Calcutta. Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay. Japan Art Tower Mito. Contemporary Art Center. Edo -Tokyo Museum, Setagaya Art Museum and otherbuildings in Tokyo. Architectural information only, from Ellipsis. Hiroshima City Transportation Museum....