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Henri Matisse
Le bonheur de vivre
(The Joy of Life)
1905-1906
Oil on canvas
69.5” x 94.75”
Barnes Foundation
Philadelphia, PA This colorful work depicting a park full of frolicking nude figures is one of Matisse's many conic fauvist works. Non-realist coloring of pink trees, blue grass, and figures radiating an aura of turquoise conveys an emotional use of color, flowing lines and shapes, and painterly brush strokes. -
Characterized by bold brush strokes, thick layers of paint (impasto) and bright and saturated expressive colors, post-impressionism further experiments with abstraction and flattened perspective. The artist's subjective feeling takes a front seat, and we begin to see an emphasis on geometric forms.
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Vincent van Gogh,
Café Terrace at Night
1888, O/C, 2’8” x 2’2”
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands Perhaps the most iconic of the Post-Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh's work is instantly identifiable by his visible artist's hand- through thick impasto painting techniques, short brush strokes come together to form a flattened perspective of the night life of the city. Van Gogh's use of complimentary primary colors are emotionally activating, as if the cafe is a warm light to a moth. -
Vincent van Gogh
Wheatfield with Crows
1890
O/C, 19.8” x 41”
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam This landscape work shows us further example of van Gogh's iconic technique of short brush strokes to visually communicate the texture of the environment- the wheat, the grass and dirt path, the road off the side, the evening sky and moon-lit clouds. One of van Gogh's final works, the flattened perspective evokes an emotional feeling of the unseen path ahead and what mysteries may lie there. -
Primitivism is an artistic trend inspired by a colonial perception of the exoticized "other" in non-europeans regions such as Africa, Asia, Oceania, as well as indigenous Americans. The aesthetics of these regions are taken and turned into inspiration for European artists who infantilized these "uncivilized" cultures into a conceptual idea of natural innocence due to the lack of European style industrialization.
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Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau)
Paul Gauguin
1892
Oil on canvas
45.6 in × 53 in
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo Gauguin made a lifestyle out of his Primitivist colonial expressions. Here we see his Tahitian child bride posed in an overturned odalisque with a caught-off-gaurd expression. At the foot of the bed is a spectral figure, referencing local beliefs of the supernatural. This work is visually similar to 1814 Orientalist work Grande Odalisque by
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres -
Jane Avril
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
1893
Lithograph
50 13/16 x 36 13/16 in. Toulouse-Latrec's work signifies the beginning of a new look to advertising, legalized in France in 1881, this visual style is still seen in graphic design today. A colorful dancing performer on a stage-turned upright base is a work meant to advertise performers in Paris. These simplified flat 2D figures and objects are inspired by the Japanese wood block technique very popular in Japan at the time, (japonaiserie) -
Edvard Munch
The Scream (of Nature)
1893
O/C, 36” x 28.9”
The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway This iconic early modernist work, Munch would recreate The Scream in several mediums over two decades. In an expressionistic colorful illustration of terror, the sky turns red. This serves not only as an emotionally provocative abstract color, but as a true depiction of the sky after a Volcanic Eruption. This representation of a panic attack is easily read In the horrified face of the figure. -
The Fauves (meaning 'wild beast') are a modernist art movement characterized by increasingly abstract images, painterly brush strokes, flat perspective, and most notably an wide and non-representational color palette. Color was used as a means of emotional expression.
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"Fauvism Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2025. TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/fauvism/
First published on 25 Jan 2015. All other information sourced from lecture notes and provided slideshows. -
One of the first 20th Century modernist movements, Expressionism aligns historically with a new philosophical existentialism, and the development of psychoanalysis by thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. This era is visually identified by deeply abstracted rise of painterly expressions of isolation and anxiety as imperialism and colonial empires expand their power alone with the modernization of military technology.
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André Derain
The Dance,
1906
o/c
175 x 225 cm
Fridart Foundation Collection Here in Derain's work we see an intersection of Fauvism and Primitivism in an expressive and brightly colored work depicting bold flat figures dancing. Derian was inspired to create this work after seeing an exhibit of Gauguin's primitive Tahitian paintings. -
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso
1907
Oil on canvas
96 in × 92 in
MoMA. NYC Picasso's Demoiselles marks the beginning of Cubism. In a new sort of Geometric abstraction, this work of analytical cubism shows us a group of figures in abstracted poses, bodies, and expressions. Picasso was not exempt from the era's Primitivist influence, and found inspiration in ancient African art, specifically masks. This open form work shattered the picture plane traditional perspective. -
Perhaps one of the most recognizable modernist styles, Cubism, as the name implies, is visually identified by sharp geometric angles combined to form fragmented and abstracted expressions of space, movement, and figures. As with all early Modernism painting movements, there is again an influence of primitivism in the use of masked faces as inspired by ethnographic museum looted exhibits. We see in cubism a tactile texture, along with a new style of collage utilized in the synthetic category.
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In what must be the ultimate form of anti-academic style, Futurism is identified as an intense embrace of modern technology and industrialization. Seed, movement, and mechanical power are often the subject of these work. This controversial movement's manifest expressed a dedication to war, and a hatred for women. While these works are visually fascinating, there is an undercurrent of growing Italian fascism and glorification of violence, Accelerationism, and imperial domination.
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The Dream
Henri Rousseau
1910
Oil on canvas
204.5 cm × 298.5 cm (80.5 in × 117.5 in)
Museum of Modern Art, New York Henri Rousseau the dream shows us a wider palette of jewel tones, and a surreal exotic environment of geometric nature and animals. Rosseau's work would go on to inspire Picasso's cubism. -
Umberto Boccioni,
The City Rises
1910
O/c
78” x 119”
MoMA, NYC This large work flattens our perspective, fractures an image to promote an action in movement and dynamic. This is a work celebrating the building of a new power plant in Milan. The erratic movement suggests active labor, abstracting the creation of a landmark industrial development. This image shows us, as well, the movements that came along side- from the edge faded colors of impressionism to the geometric lines of cubism. -
Masks
Emil Nolde
1911
Oil on canvas
29" x 31"
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Inspired by masks and art from the global south, Nolde's Masks shows an expressionist representation of social alienation. Nolde was a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brüke (The Bridge) which valued quickly composed, emotional compositions, rich with color. -
Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VII
1913
O/C
78.7” x 118”
The State Tretyakov Gallery
Moscow Kandinsky was a founding member of the German Expressionist group Der Blau Reiter that imbued colors with representative meanings. Kandinsky's gift of Synthesis made for multi-sensory works of color, shape, and lines. This is pure, non-representational abstraction, and an iconic look that mirrors the simultaneous psychoanalysis research in Germany, in a marriage of external and internal senses. -
Bottle, Glass, and Pipe (Violette de Parme)
Georges Braque
ly 1914
Cut-and-pasted newspaper, painted paper and wallpaper, charcoal, graphite, and gouache on paperboard
18 15/16'' × 24 3/16''
MOMA, NYC In tandem with Analytical Cubism, was Synthetic Cubism. Ironically named, the sector is defined by mixed media of found objects and non-traditional artistic tactile texture. This cubism is identified in the same flattened geometric perspective, but with the new addition of collage style.. -
Gino Severini
Armored Train in Action
1915
o/c
45'' x 35''
MoMA, NYC Approaching World War I, the futurists believed in the artistic power of industrialized technology, especially in the context of war, armored trains as abstractly depicted here. Futurism's industrial admiration came with a new depiction of dynamic movement, illustrated using sharp lines and blended hues.