Painting and Graphics

Gothic is a European medieval art movement that replaced the Romanesque style, and included architecture, sculpture, painting, fresco and other platforms of fine art.

From the Latin "romanus" - Roman. The term "Romanesque art" was introduced in the 19th century by the Frenchman Arcisse de Caumont.

The definition of "International Gothic" was proposed simultaneously by art historians Louis Courageot and Julius von Schlosser in the 1890s.

American figurative expressionism is an art movement in the painting of American modernism of the second half of the 20th century, which originated in Boston and spread throughout the United States. This movement was partially opposed to abstract expressionism and abstractionism.

Bad painting, a definition consisting of various artistic methods borrowed from movements such as lowbrow art, surrealism, expressionism, kitsch, folk art, was used to define the artistic methods of a number of artists active in the late 20th century.

Mannerism was an art movement of the 16th - first third of the 17th centuries, which arose in Italy and spread to the territories of France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

Aestheticism is a European art movement of the second half of the 19th century, which was based on the aesthetics of form, avoiding socio-political and moral-ethical aspects.

Byzantine painting is a movement of medieval art, the central part of which was icon painting. The movement derived from the Christianized Greek culture of the Eastern Roman Empire. The era of the Roman Empire ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

New Objectivity (in German, Neue Sachlichkeit) - an artistic movement that emerged in the second half of the 1920s in Germany as another outbreak of neoclassicism in Europe, went out with the advent of Nazism in 1933.

Kitsch is an art movement where works are focused on the needs of everyday consciousness and mass production, bought “for comfort”, as a keepsake, as a gift. Kitsch works were created by both professional craftsmen and amateurs.

Social realism is an international art movement that manifested itself in painting, graphics, photography and cinema. This movement is based on the depiction of working class life.

New European Painting is a contemporary art movement that emerged in the 1980s and peaked in the 1990s.

Lowbrow art is a contemporary underground art movement, a characteristic feature of which is the artistic and technical eclecticism of such styles and phenomena as surrealism, primitivism, pop art, comics, punk rock, and youth subcultures.

Digital painting is a contemporary art movement , the main method of which is the creation of electronic images using computer programs that imitate the traditional techniques and tools of the artist.

Mail art is a contemporary art movement that uses postage stamps and other postal materials as pictorial media that are turned into works of art outside the context of writing.

The term was introduced by the American artist and critic Helen de Kooning, this definition was later used by other art critics.

Lettrism is a French avant-garde art movement founded in Paris in the mid-1940s by the Romanian artist Isidore Isu.

Biedermeier is a style in German and Austrian art, in particular, painting and graphics, arts and crafts and interior design; it arose on the basis of the principles of romanticism of the German-Austrian province with features of classicism and Empire style.

Stakism is a remodernist art movement founded in 1999 in England by artists Billy Childish and Charlie Thomson, whose concept was to promote figurativeness as opposed to conceptualism.

Rococo is an art movement based on elements of classicism and baroque; it originated in France. This style was widespread in Italy, Russia, Germany, Czech Republic, etc.

Neo-Rococo painting is a 19th-century art movement that mimics the 18th-century Rococo and Pompadour style and reflects the grace and sophistication of the aristocracy. Its characteristic feature is eclecticism.

Neo-primitivism

Neo-primitivism was the first artistic movement of the Russian avant-garde of the early twentieth century, which showed a particular interest in exoticism and authenticity.

The movement appeared under the influence of the Mayan epic “Popol Vuh” translated by K. Balmont with a large number of photographs of artefacts of ancient civilizations of Mexico. The materials were published in the magazines “Art” and “Golden Fleece”. It is worth adding that primitive artists were inspired by collections of primitive cultures that were already in museums in St. Petersburg.

The “Jack of Diamonds” exhibition, held in 1910, presented the first works of Neo-primitivists. The next step was taken in 1913: those were the expositions “Target” and “Donkey Tail”.

In 1913, the basic techniques and principles of Neo-primitivism were described in the brochure of Alexander Shevchenko “Neo-primitivism. Its theory. Its features. Its achievements.”

The origin of this movement coincides with the emergence of German Expressionism. Both of them have a common goal - to show a sincere mood without academic snobbery. Also worth mentioning are Cubists who were inspired by African folk art. For example, Pablo Picasso was shocked by the exhibition of African masks: with the help of their transformation into painting, he expressed how imperfect and even ugly the world is. The paintings of Neo-primitivists, in contrast, were characterized by kindness and naivety.

Artists used various media: oil, canvas, tempera, pencil, paper, etc. Genres: subject-themed, religious, symbolic, portrait, still life, nude.

Key ideas:

- This style has features of the fence painting, “soldier's painting”, the Russian icon, popular print, shop signboard, and children’s drawings.

- The creation of sincere and naive original images by simplifying artistic means and simplicity of composition, using the experience of naive art.

- An important role is played by bright colours superficially affecting the viewer, until the moment he managed to understand them.

- The naive simplicity of an artist-child coexists with the complexity of the psyche of an adult and is combined in ironic, symbolic and most ordinary motives, which is an impeccable collaboration in the work of Neo-primitivists.

Lubok is a type of graphic folk art with the use of text reflecting "Russian reality", it was available even to the most bankrupt buyers, and was intended for mass distribution. The art of popular prints was born in China.

Fantastic RealismThe art movement emerged in 1948. Later, Fantastic Realism was transformed into Visionary art. Artists work in this style to this day.In the late 1950s, critic Johann Mushik first used the term “Phantastischer realismus” to describe a group of artists working in Vienna. Artists belonged to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, which has existed since 1948. Its main representatives were Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer and Rudolf Hausner.Fantastic Realism is similar to Realism, Surrealism, Magical Realism and Analytical art. Unlike Surrealism, Fantastic Realism more strictly adheres to the principles of the traditional easel image "in the spirit of the old masters". It differs from Realism in depicting situations that can be explained logically.Masters used cotton and linen canvases, oil, ink, paper, pencils, tempera, etc.Genres: symbolic, religious, portrait, still life, subject-themed, figurative, landscape, city landscape. Some works are design, illustrations and sculptures.Key ideas: - Fantastic - an equal and regular category of aesthetics.- Religious and mystical character - based on strange situations, dreams and nightmares.- Symbolism and allegory are integral parts of the subtext. Some works “scream” about social and political issues.- The study of the hidden corners of the human soul, the creation of surreal and supernatural motives based on the traumatic events of war, fatigue and pain. Therefore, the characters of the paintings are not much like real people.

Vorticism1914-1918 (1920) Vorticism was a short movement of avant-garde art that appeared in the early twentieth century exclusively in England under the influence of Futurism and Cubism. It is represented by paintings and graphic works.On July 2, 1914, in the first issue of BLAST magazine, the Vorticism manifesto was printed with a pink cover with the participation of David Bomberg, Lawrence Atkinson, Wyndham Lewis, Spencer Gore, Rebecca West and Ezra Pound. The editor was Wyndham Lewis. Ezra Pound was an ideological inspirer. He was the one who named the movement Vorticism in 1913. The magazine lasted two years but influenced British modernism.English artist and art critic Roger Fry, who promoted post-impressionism, was at the origins of Vorticism. Later, it was influenced by Italian futurism in the person of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who lectured on the Italian avant-garde.Mostly, artists used canvas, oil, pencil and paper. Genres of work were subject-themed, cityscape, landscape, figurative, portrait and still life.Key ideas:- Vorticism was an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism. This art movement refused the softness of the depicted objects, through geometricity tending to abstraction.- Paintings of artists express their desire to capture the movement through sharp geometric lines, vortices and planes. Also, Vorticists used bright contrasting colours; there is no aerial perspective in their works - the far part of the composition is as saturated as the front one.- Due to the brutal continuity of lines, zigzags and planes, subject-themed paintings are similar to abstractions.

Plentanism

Plentanism is an art movement that appeared in the 1960s in Ukraine, both the author’s technique of I. Marchuk and the phenomenon of the synthesis of various artistic movements.

The term is associated with the exhibition “The Voice of My Soul” of Ivan Marchuk, and it was he who gave the name to the movement. Here we see “plents” for the first time in the paintings.

Media: oil, canvas, cardboard, tempera, paper, pencil, etc. Genres: subject-themed, symbolic, landscape, portrait, nude, still life.

Key ideas:

- The elements of surrealism, symbolism, analytical art, abstractionism and graphic techniques are traced in plentanism.

- The creation of one’s free world is the main principle of Plentanism.

- The main features of the movement are ribbons, strokes, zigzags and threads that resemble the weave of the web that are more complex than in nature and voluminous. Characteristic ribbons resemble intentionally convolutedly twisted wires, clusters of coral, and sometimes neatly cut rags of cloth, washed and colourless aprons. “Plents” are like an endoskeleton, breaking through the shell of an object, but not taking life, which is just assimilation. All this gives rise to a special philosophical style with inclusions of symbolism.

- Despite the specificity of the style, the paintings are perceived easily, make you look at them carefully. Surprisingly, even the simplest landscapes are characterized by semantic overfill.

TonalismTonalism was an art movement that appeared in the USA at the end of the 19th century. Paintings that can be attributed to this art movement were created before and after a certain period until today. Art historians argue that it is sometimes impossible to find the edge between Symbolism and Tonalism, Tonalism and Impressionism. The main genres were landscapes, marinas, light story paintings, similar in style. Most masters used oil, boards and canvases (cotton and linen). Some works are similar to the grisaille technique.Key ideas:- In the first works of Tonalists, dark tones prevailed - gray, sepia, dark blue and black. These works are similar to symbolism as they have the same symbols (sunrise, the power of tree trunks, and the eternity of the stone).- The lighter ones are similar to the works of the impressionists, but the main difference is that tonalism has a deeper dramatic mood; in George Inness's works, trees seem to suffer, knowing some painful secret.- Tonalists achieved almost abstract physical smoothness; therefore, even having made every effort, we cannot tear off a piece of wave or cloud from the general composition. In paintings of Impressionists, we can see every stroke, every dot; pure colours were often used, as some artists categorically claimed; art historians and artists still disagree with this.- It is believed that later Tonalism was absorbed in Impressionism. It is important to note that landscapes and marinas were depicted from afar; the central characters of the paintings were air and fog - great use of aerial perspective: the artists seemed to be trying to scoop up the whole world.- The amazing semantic integrity of the paintings does not allow us to divide certain works into the genres “landscape”, “marina” or “plot-thematic”, although both are present in the same painting; for example, “Summer Landscape” by George Inness (1894) and “Gray silver fog, lifeboat ”by James Whistler (1884).

NaturalismNaturalism was an art movement that emerged in France in the 1870s as a late stage of Realism in close connection with sociology. Naturalism - from French naturalisme, from Latin naturalis - "natural". French critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary first used this name to refer to an artistic concept. Later the term was introduced by French writer Emile Zola.Types of Naturalism: landscape, figurative. Genres: storyline, landscape, illustration.Similar movements: Romanticism, Realism. Art historians argue that Naturalism was synthesized into Symbolism and supplanted by Impressionism. It is important to remember that this term can be applied to varying degrees to works of art of different periods.Paintings with botanical images are relevant to this day and adorn classic interiors. The wide scientific application of Naturalism can be traced in book illustrations. Thanks to Scientific Naturalism, we have paintings of different species of plants and animals that do not exist today.Key ideas:- Despite the close connection of Naturalism with science, philosophy and sociology, the main task is not “how” but “who” or “what” is drawn.- With the help of “photographic method”, masters depicted nature and people with the least distortion and interpretation, with physiological characteristics and pathologies but with the presence of moral and aesthetic criticism.- The concept excludes romantic subjectivity and satirical colouring.- An important component of the art movement is the minimization of the image of God; religion is replaced by faith in nature and its laws.

SpatialismSpatialism was an art movement that was founded in Italy in the 1940s, as a collaboration of painting and sculpture.The founder and author of the term was Lucio Fontana (“Manifesto tecnico dello Spazialismo”, 1947).The preamble of the movement is Lucio Fontana’s confident cut on an untreated canvas. However, in general, this is only a small component in the art of the twentieth century, with the help of which the genius, injuring the “Black Square”, looked outside the picture space, behind which a new semantic concept was hidden.Works of Spatialists are combinations of Concrete art, Tashism, Dada, Minimalism, interest in scientific progress and the search for new media in painting. Techniques: oil, canvas, paper, plasticine, wood, metal, fabric, readymade, etc. Genres: abstraction, sculpture, installation.Key ideas:The fusion of painting and sculpture into something single, integral, multisemantic, underlined by colour, form, space.The main task of Spatialism is to use the fine art to show the moment in time, the energy of the master’s movement, to convey the sounds and sensations of space; symbiosis of statics and dynamics to the contemplator.The following elements are inherent in this art movement:- cuts and scratches of different lengths on canvases and solid objects; - punctures of different diameters, depths; - torn holes on paintings, panels and solid objects; - composition of solid objects, fabric or paper glued to the canvas; - a combination of the layering of canvases and other surfaces at a certain distance one after another with round or oval holes to create spatial depth. The holes are centered or disordered; - depression, or convexity of the canvas or other surfaces with the help of an auxiliary object, without its visibility; - sculptures and installations, consisting of different materials. They can be unique, or consisting of readymade; - electric light is used.

Neo-ByzantineNeo-Byzantine was an art movement that originated in Ukraine; its founder was Mikhail Boychuk. It is represented by easel and monumental painting. The movement ended due to the executions of “Boychukists” in the 30s of the twentieth century.It should be noted that the development of Neo-Byzantine is closely related to church architecture, and also showed itself in the press (woodcut, book graphics), ceramics, sculpture, weaving, Ukrainian puppet theater and stained glass.Neo-Byzantine paid special attention to the icon, which is influenced by such fashionable movements of that time as Cubism, Fauvism, Art Nouveau, and Post-impressionism. For example, figures acquire cubist broken planes (Prophet Eliyah, 1913. Mikhail Boychuk).Key ideas:- the concept of the synthesis of neo-Byzantine arts is based on the design features of the Byzantine style and Old Russian painting, the search for a new aesthetic with reference to the past. The main task is the philosophical understanding of the problems of being and the role of a human being in it;- the stylistic characteristics of the Byzantine style are preserved - leanness and lengthening of the proportions of the human body, the presence of church attributes and the absence of a specific light source. Some works have an aerial perspective.

Neo-romanticismNeo-romanticism was an art movement that appeared at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, based on the principles of Romanticism. M.V. Tolmachev claims that the term first emerged in the 1880s-90s in Germany.The movement was fully manifested in literature, architecture, sculpture, theater, design, leaving a mark in painting in England and France. Art historians see it as an early phase of Modernism. It is worth saying that Neo-romanticism does not have a strict definition in art and is a historical and artistic phenomenon.Since Neo-romanticism was at the crossroads of the births of many art systems, the boundaries between them are unstable. Pictures can be simultaneously attributed to Neo-romanticism or Symbolism, Neo-romanticism or Neoclassicism. Many artists are referred to this movement only superficially, for example, Emile Bernard, Pavel Chelishchev, John Minton, John Piper.Similar movements: Romanticism, Neoclassicism, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Latin American Modernism.Genres: portrait, nude, historical, mythological, landscape, literary. Art forms: illustration, poster, design, etc. Media: oil, canvas, panel, wood, pencil, paper, graphite.Key ideas:- The amorphous concept of Neo-romanticism can be confidently called the “spirit of the time”, which sought to renew all spheres of art and to search for new philosophical orientations. All typical values ​​can be found even in the usual turmoil at a certain angle of the observer; however, as a rule, Neo-romantic observers were slightly uncertain.- The presence of the “new” hero in the paintings - a strong, bright person; self-portraits are also endowed with the semantic qualities of the “new” hero. Particular attention is paid to a lone figure inscribed in a landscape or interior; not only men but also women and mythological characters are endowed with artistic and moral equality.- The main feature of Neo-romanticism is the synthesis of history, legend, reality with new trends, parallel coexistence with more influential movements. Therefore, Neo-romanticism is not characterized by artistic monotype. In such works, the embodiment of the illusions and fantasies of artists is traced.

Contemporary realism. New Realism. Modern Realism. American Realism Contemporary realism is an art movement that appeared in the late 1950s and early 1970s in the USA as modernization of realism with the help of new methods of contemporary art; it is quite popular today. The term appeared in the early 1960s.In the paintings, there are techniques of impressionism, art deco, magical realism and graphics; contemporary realism opposes cubism and expressionism. In general, artists adhere to the rules of Academism. The works are characterized by a bright palette, homogeneous colour fields, large scale and special tonality of figurativeness, similar to Art Deco. Artists are not afraid of space.Genres: nude, portrait, landscape, cityscape, still life, animalistic. Media: oil, watercolour, pencil, canvas, wood, panel, paper.Similar art movements: Photorealism, Social realism, Regionalism.Key ideas:- The human body is the dominant object in the pictures of contemporary realists; it is inscribed in space, everyday situations and non-trivial “nude” poses.- The main idea is objectivity, which expresses the importance of depicting real natural objects, but not ideal ones. Even if the picture contains social semantics, it is of secondary importance.

Magic RealismMagical realism was an artistic movement of the twentieth century, a response to a realistic image of the world through a multifaceted meaning with magical inclusions.It is generally accepted that the origins of the movement are related to the exhibition “Neue Sachlichkeit” of the post-expressionist movement of the same name in Weimar Germany in 1924.For the first time, the term “magic realism” was used by Franz Roo in his book “Post-Expressionism. Magical Realism” in 1925.Key ideas:- Magical Realism rejected social and political problems at its very beginning. It focused on the side of the reality of everyday plots hidden from the naïve point of view.- Art historians claim that sometimes there is no clear line between Magical Realism, Fantastic Realism and Surrealism.- The artists used a variety of media. Among genres, portrait and nude were the most frequent; this is not characteristic of Fantastic Realism.- The contrast and smoothness of the chiaroscuro transition have something in common with Art Deco, while the colour palette sometimes resembles Art Nouveau.- Masters working in this style excluded frankly fantastic images. There is only one desire - to emphasize reality using magic elements but not to immerse the viewer in unreality.- Although we can find pictures that indicate political or social problems, most of the works have an intangible secret meaning, strange perspectives - as if someone was spying on someone. This slightly resembles Intimism.

MiserablismMiserablism was an art movement that was founded in France in the 1940s.Paintings of this style express particularly melancholy and depression.This movement derived from the Expressionism of French artist Francis Gruber, in which the characters of the paintings just began to weaken and dry out. Mostly, figurative exhaustion is observed in paintings by Bernard Buffet. The thinness of the characters and the shape of the skull of most characters resemble the actual constitution of the artist's body. Sculptures of A. Giacometti can be referred to as Miserablism. Techniques: oil and canvas. Genres: subject-themed, religious, still life and portrait.Key ideas:- The palette is cold, mostly gray, dirty “scratched” shades of light yellow, beige, brown and red. Shades of gray resemble the pallor of the skin of an exhausted person.- The philosophical implication is the crisis of the optimism of human existence.- Artistic combination of Expressionism, Cubism and graphics.- A characteristic feature is atrophied figurativeness in the interior. Figures have physical exhaustion, angularity, weakness; however, these are just interpretations of ethical tragedy: detachment, disappointment, doom and asceticism.

Feminist ArtFeminist art is a movement that emerged in the context of the theory of feminism; it emphasizes the existence of gender discrimination. The art movement appeared in the late 1960s. The concept of "art-feminism" is based on a huge number of moral, ethical and socio-political problems between a woman and a man that have existed for many centuries. It is a well-known fact that in the recent past women were forbidden to attend art schools, not to mention participation in exhibitions, which seems inadequate to modern people. Until the middle of the twentieth century, men’s creations dominated the exhibitions; that only increased discontent among female artists.Art feminism can exist in the form of painting, photography, installation, sculpture, performance, art protest, video, and so on. The subjects are taken from social problems in relation to women: inability to vote, a ban on holding high posts, unwillingness to feel like a sex object or a cook who never leaves the kitchen, imposed obedience; women require decent pay, the right to solve ordinary family issues without the approval of men, and so on.Key ideas:- “Why aren't there great women artists?” – This is how we can characterize questions of women to the modern society. It may seem superficial, but this slogan is just the tip of the iceberg, which melts revealing the existing problems, forcing society to realize them and get free from them.- Art-feminism does not focus on the nature of the female essence: it focuses on the defects of society as a whole, demanding equality in the social hierarchy. Works of Art feminism are the voices of a million women. They express the relationship between a woman, a man, a child and society. This is an acquaintance with the depths of female consciousness, experience and fear. The representative of feminist art recalls that she has the same rights as a man. She is not a subject of art; she is an author, a creator.

Neo-DadaFrom 1950 to this dayFrom Greek “neos” (new); the word Dadaism comes from the French “dada” - a horse in children's speech. The term was coined by American critic Barbara Rose in the 1960s.Neo-Dadaism is an art movement uniting such structures of visual art as painting, sculpture, installation and performance; a combination of modern movements with the principles of dada.Neo-Dada most often uses readymade, referring to the methods of dada.Some elements of Neo-Dada: sloppy, “untidy”, figurative or abstract painting, broken furniture, electrical appliances, torn books, children's toys, crumpled rags, cans, glass bottles, musical instruments, a barn, performance and so on.Key ideas:- The concept of Neo-Dada is the denial of art through the replacement of a work of art with an object of absurdity, the desire to dissolve it in life, the struggle against the cultural canons and logic of capitalism.- Neo-Dadaists considered themselves opponents of commercialization, moving away from aesthetic pleasure.- The semantic load of works is sarcasm, irony and claim.

Street artStreet art is an art movement that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century as an art phenomenon that covered not the canvases and gallery walls but everything outside: the walls of residential buildings, fences, tree trunks, bridge piers, industrial factories and abandoned premises. It differs from vandalism and hooliganism by the motivation for improving the aesthetic atmosphere of the city. Also, it cannot be an advertisement.The oldest graffiti was discovered by restorers on the walls of the Coliseum; some of them looked like "bodily bottom".Street art exists in the form of an abandoned note, book or postcard, chalk inscriptions, graffiti (spray art), 3D graffiti, poster, stencil, street installation, partisan sculpture, partisan knitting (yarnbombing) and tree decorations, stickers, mural, street performance ("action", "monstration") and flash mob.Each author has his stylized logo - a sign or signature.Key ideas:- Although Street art has the characteristic features of anonymity, unauthorizedness and undergroundness, this art belongs to everyone. Everyone is a spectator; each spectator is a participant.- This movement seeks to meet modern trends, has aesthetics and semantic load and makes gallery paintings on canvas from gray walls, turning dangerous and poor neighborhoods into worthy and prestigious ones and involving local and tourists in a dialogue.- The diverse plot of the compositions tells us that the idea dominates the form - instead of the mediocre message “I am,” there is the confident “I think so”.

Folk art is a collective skill of many generations of nameless and famous self-taught artists, which, passing from father to son, retained plots, color features, ornament and other artistic features.

Neo-BaroqueNeo-Baroque (from Italian “Barocco” – artsy; from Greek “Neos” - new) was an art movement that developed in European art in the second third of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was based on the principles of Baroque (end of the sixteenth - the middle of the eighteenth centuries). Among the first to use such a term was Spanish philosopher H.R. de Bentos.Similar movements: Naturalism, Neoclassicism, Baroque, Symbolism.Genres: mythological, battle, religious, historical, portrait, nude, symbolic.Art form: painting, graphics, sculpture.Media: oil, tempera, canvas, panel, paper, wood.Key ideas:- “The main thing is not to be but to appear.”- The dominance of fragmentary and dual over the integral and the real; Neo-Baroque works have a theatrical style, naive lightness, decorativeness, behind which all the same routine is hidden. Nevertheless, some paintings are filled with historicism and deep meaning.- The combination of reality and mythology, grace and rudeness, pleasure and pain.- The masters manage to convey the subtleties of the character's psyche – viewers can trace their painstaking work with the facial expressions of the hero. We easily determine the mood of each character and the composition as a whole.

The Italian word barocco (bizarre, strange) comes presumably from the Portuguese barroco - a pearl of irregular shape, or from the Latin baroco - a mnemonic designation for one of the modes of syllogism.

Optical art is an art movement of the second half of the twentieth century, based on the peculiarities of the perception of flat and spatial figures through various visual illusions that arise automatically, giving rise to some kind of disturbance inside a person, thereby making us pay attention to the work.

Concretism is an art movement within Abstractionism of the first half of the twentieth century, characterized by images of geometric forms, often mathematically verified, without figurative or symbolic links.

New Realism was an art movement of the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, the manifesto of which was signed on October 27, 1960 in Paris, headed by art critic Pierre Restany, who also coined the term.

Hypermanerism was an art movement of postmodern painting that interprets Mannerist, Baroque, Renaissance painting. Originated in Italy, later gained popularity in France.

Monumental painting was an art movement within monumental art, characterized by the application of a long-lasting coloring agent to architectural structures and other stationary foundations, which characterizes the large scale of the works.

Pre-RaphaelitesPre-Raphaelitism was a revolutionary art movement. It appeared in the early 1850s in England as the opposite of the academic canons and cultural norms of the Victorian era. The concept “before Raphael” suggests that the artists used a light colour palette, characteristic of the paintings of Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini and Pietro Perugino.The emergence of the movement is associated with the opposition of artists in relation to the established norms of academism and with their union in the "Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites." The brotherhood initially consisted of seven members: John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Woolner, Michael Rossetti, Frederick Stevens and James Collinson.English critic John Ruskin provided significant assistance in the formation of the Pre-Raphaelites, giving a positive appraisal of their work in newspaper articles, incorporating them into an independent art system and buying their paintings.Media: oil, canvas, panel, wood. Genres: religious, historical, literary, allegory, landscape. It should be noted that the innovative way of the painting of the Pre-Raphaelites transformed the religious style into a social one - the icon can no longer be hung in the church, it resembles a more subject-themed scene. The landscapes are bright, with biblical moods; each leaf of the bush is distinct. The allegories are characteristic: a cat eating a bird, as the inability to get out of a difficult situation, a dove, as a symbol of innocence, an open window is hope. A special place is given to female images, calm, dreamy, aware, detached, with beautiful figures and well-groomed hair.The painting of the Pre-Raphaelites had an impact on graphics (book illustrations), interior design, photo, architecture and landscape design.Similar art movements: Victorian fairy-tale painting, aesthetics. It significantly influenced Symbolism and Art Nouveau.Key ideas:- The main difference from the paintings of modern masters of that time, whose works were dark and gloomy (many of them used bitumen) - is painting on light soil, applying a double layer of zinc white and using translucent paints. This made the palette light and bright. An amazing fact is that the primordial brightness of the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites has been preserved to this day. The life interpretation of plots is naturalistic.- The paintings of this movement are characterized by the aesthetic equality of the artist and the model, the model and the character. For example, peasants dressed in appropriate outfits were models for portraits of nobles.- The Pre-Raphaelites were adherents of painting from nature. They posed for families, relatives, friends and neighbours.

Romanticism was an artistic philosophical and cultural movement in European and American painting of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century, which praises the beauty of nature, human fantasies, heroes of real life and books.

CloissonismFrom French “cloison” (partition). The natural planes of the image are highlighted with contrasting or soft contours and filled with colours. The outlines are reminiscent of a stained-glass window partition or Art Nouveau graphics.The term was introduced in 1888 by French critic Edouard Dujardin, who briefly described the work of Louis Anquetin.Cloissonism is an artistic movement within Post-Impressionism that originated in 1887, as the author's style of Emile Bernard and Louis Anquetin. Similar movements are Symbolism and Synthetism. Picturesque techniques of Japonism and Fauvism are also present.Media: gouache, watercolour, tempera, canvas, panel, wood, etc. Genres: subject-thematic, symbolic, religious, nude, portrait, animalistic, landscape and still life. Posing and direct visual contact with the hero of the picture is also visible.Key ideas:- A human being is the main object in the paintings of Cloisonnists. The plot consists of various human occupations - working in the field, sewing, grazing, resting, eating, swimming, etc.- Detailed drawing of planes, small elements using closed lines. Filling planes with colours of different tones. The lack of tonality in Cloisonnism flattens objects, almost destroys the aerial perspective; it resembles works of Fauvists. Due to the use of bright “hot” shades of yellow and red, the paintings seem very warm; they are easily perceived by the viewer.

Japanese paintingIn Japanese - 絵 画 (kaiga), also 画 道 (gado) - painting, drawing.Japanese painting is an art movement consisting of many styles and genres that appeared in Japan in 300 BC. Due to historical confusion, it is important to know that Japanese painting and Japonism are separately existing art movements.Periods: Yamato, Nara, Heian, Muromachi, Azuchi-Monoyama, Edo, Meiji, Taisho, Shoeva.Japanese painting derived from Chinese art, being influenced by Indian painting. At the end of the 16th century, it became known in the West. In the 19th century, it borrowed elements from Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelitism and Neoclassicism. The movement influenced Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, forming a subsidiary but independent movement, “Japonism”, in which such outstanding masters as Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Auguste Renoir worked. The current indisputable influence is traced in the anime.Techniques and media: ink, ink, wood, paper, silk, gold foil and silver foil.Genres: religious, literary, battle, everyday, historical, portrait, landscape, allegory, illustration and animalistic. The elements of fine art of Japanese painting include fragments of utensils and household items, calligraphy of hieroglyphs, mandala, sculpture, woodcut, painting on vertical and horizontal scrolls of paper or silk, theater engravings, biographical prints, murals and book illustrations.Key ideas:- The main genre is landscape. It has a special religious character, even if it is a lone pine tree on an empty background. The landscape is an icon. It is often accompanied by calligraphy.- It should be noted that Japanese painting, like Chinese, is not afraid of space, which is a vivid characteristic of this movement.- Drawings represent battle scenes of myths and stories, landscapes of four seasons with images of specific plant species, religious scenes from the Buddhist tradition, portraits of emperors and other statesmen, everyday situations with satirical implications, images of geishas, actors of the kabuki theater, samurai, sumo wrestlers, fishermen and peasants.- The palette can be monochrome or colour.

The time of the first European wave is from 1916 to 1922.Synopsis:Dadaism, abbreviated Dada, is a nihilistic avant-garde movement that existed in painting and literature. It originated in Switzerland as a response to the horrors and disasters of the First World War. Representatives of this style by the name itself emphasized the criminality of the senseless destruction of human lives, to which, in their opinion, rationalism and logic led.There are many interpretations of the origin of this term. This is a double statement, familiar to Russians, and baby talk (in some areas of Italy, children call so their mother), and the French colloquial name for a toy rocking horse. According to a more romantic version, poet Tristan Tzara, one of the main founders and theorists of the movement, found this word in the dictionary. In his manifesto written in 1918, he said: “In the language of the Negro tribe Kru, “Dada” means the tail of the sacred cow ...” In any case, the pioneers of the new style meant something meaningless, which was the most successful name for the new creative movement. It reflected the internationalism of the dada creative work as a whole.The fact that the first Dada group was created in Zurich at the Voltaire Cabaret had a special symbolic meaning. The entertaining institution had the name of a satirist of the 18th century, the author of the famous work “Candide,” in which he made fun of the folly of modern society. Dadaists published a magazine so that their anti-war and anti-classical ideas could be brought to the masses. After the end of the war, when the Dadaists left Switzerland for their countries, the geography of style greatly expanded. For example, R. Hulzenbek founded Dada Club in Berlin; the influential group existed in Cologne under the leadership of M. Ernst and J. Bargeld, and Marcel Duchamp exported Dada to America.Later, French Dada art merged with Surrealism, and German one merged with Expressionism. The direct followers of the ideas and some techniques of Dadaists became representatives of American pop-art, and then conceptual artists.Key artists:Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia (France, America); Raoul Hausmann (Austria); Sergey Sharshun (Russia, France); Marcel Janco (Romania, Israel); Kurt Schwitters, Hans Arp, Max Ernst (Germany, France).Key ideas:1) The fundamental values ​​of Dadaism are cynicism and the denial of standards. Only the irrationality that goes to the point of absurdity, and the complete lack of aesthetics demonstrated artists' disillusionment with the existing rules that led to armed conflicts.2) Representatives of Dadaism, focusing on creating aesthetically unattractive objects, aimed to turn the whole bourgeois morality and culture upside down, thereby expressing their negative attitude towards them. The introduction of an element of chance by artists (some part, if not all of the work, was done at random) became one of the forms of denial of the traditional canons in art, when each composition was carefully designed and should be harmonious and complete.3) Dadaists were the first to use the "ready-made" method, including industrial products or their parts in their compositions. Sometimes household items were taken entirely and exhibited as a work of art after the author's minimal intervention. This innovation raised the question of artistic creativity and made art experts think about the definition itself: what can be considered art and what its goals are.4) Dada artists preferred the collage method, and sculptors took “ready-made objects”. According to specialists, there is a reasonable explanation for this choice, because collage is not a very orderly technique, even anarchic. Dadaist sculptors, choosing rusty bicycle wheels, crumpled cans, broken bottles and other obsolete household items as objects of creativity and declaring them works of art, achieved their goal of shocking the viewer even faster.

Appeared in the 1910s of the 20th century. Officially ceased to exist in 1932, unofficially existed until 1941.Synopsis:Analytical art was an art movement in the art of Russian avant-garde. The artistic method was practically developed and theoretically explained by Pavel Filonov in a number of his treatises, starting with the article "Canon and the Law" (1912). The official date of the birth of the analytical, that is, “made up art” is considered the release of the manifesto “Intimate workshop of painters and draftsmen “Made pictures”” in 1914. The “Declaration of the World Bloom" (1923) and others were published later.Basing on the theory of Futurism and Cubism as the carrier of rationalism, Analytical artists contrasted the principle of organic growth of the artistic form to the method of “splitting” objects into its geometric figures. The essence of the principle is that trees grow from a seed, just like the plot of the painting grows from one dot. The followers of the style had their own association of young Leningrad artists, students of P. N. Filonov, named "Masters of Analytical Art" (MAA). The group began to form in the summer of 1925 around P. N. Filonov, who worked as a teacher at the Higher Art and Technical Institute and finally formed after the first exhibition in 1927 with the adoption of the regulations of the association. During the existence of MAA, its members changed many times. In total, it included around 70 artists during the years of its active work.Key artists:Pavel Filonov (founder and principal theorist), Tatyana Glebova, Alisa Poret, Mikhail Tsibasov, Sofia Zaklinovskaya, Pavel Zaltsman, Pavel Kondratiev, Boris Gurvich, Nikolai Evgrafov, Yury Khrzhanovsky.Key ideas:1) The main idea of ​​analytic art is to approach the reproduction of not ready-made objective forms of nature, but its creative processes themselves in fine art and graphic art.2) An important postulate of an Analytical artist is his promotion from the particular to the general during the creation of a painting, which ensures the principle of "organic growth" of the painting.3) The idea of the mandatory multidimensionality of the depicted plot implies the presence of many details and, therefore, several motifs in the works of this style.4) The main method of the artists of Analytical art was the completeness of the painting, thus the composition of the conceived plot from the set point (the grain of the future picture) to the edge of the canvas or the conceived composition.5) The technique of the creation of the painting implied work with thin brushes and an ink pen – an artist was not allowed to make any emotional sweeping strokes.

Minimalism, or Minimal art, originated in the United States in the first half of the 60s of the 20th century.Synopsis:Representatives of Minimal art sought to the smallest transformation of materials used in the process of creation. Therefore, the main distinguishing feature of this style is the simplicity and uniformity of forms, monochromeness, and rejection of subjectivity. All this involves creative self-restraint of a painter, sculptor or designer. Art historians see the origins of minimalism in many previous styles – Constructivism, Suprematism, Dada art and Abstract art, as well as in the formalistic American painting of the late 1950s and, in part, in pop art. American painter Frank Stella was the artist, whose art preceded minimal art. In 1959, he showed people his series of “Black paintings”, in which straight ordered lines prevailed. The first minimalist works emerged in 1962. R. Walheim introduced the term “minimal art” into the history of art, using this definition regarding the art of Marcel Duchamp and some representatives of pop art, who reduced the author's intervention in the environment to a minimum. There are several synonyms for this term: “cool” and “serial” art, “primary structures”, “systematic painting”, “ABC-art”, and “art as a process”. While the minimalists of the 1960s tried to convey the very idea, their followers, post-minimalists (Anish Kapoor, Joel Shapiro, Damian Ortega, etc.) sought to focus on how the idea is transmitted.Key artists:Carl Andre, Mel Bochner, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Robert Morris, Robert Ryman, sculptors Tony Smith, Anton Tzaro.Key ideas:1) For minimalism, which rejects classical techniques and traditional artistic materials, in general, there is a rejection of subjectivity and representation. Minimalists consider themselves free from the attributes of consumer culture, which was created by avant-gardists of other art movements.2) Minimalists, corresponding to their “speaking name”, use simple, mostly geometric shapes and neutral colors – white and its variations, black, grey, and also the natural texture of wood, and so on.3) The minimalism sculpture is characterized by the ideas of using industrial conveyor products as modular units and industrial production methods. The basic phonemes are squares, cubes, lines and diagrams, mostly symmetrically composed. At the same time, even indirect lines in the paintings of minimalists mostly go straight.4) Studying the form of the structure and space, representatives of this style emphasize the relationship between the place and the viewer. Compositions of minimalist sculptors lie somewhere between the existence of an idea and the limits of physical presence. That is, the three-dimensionality is created by considering the negative and positive space.5) In architecture, especially in interior minimalist design, the white color scheme is “the basis of the basics”. It demonstrates the purity of architectural forms, expands the space and perfectly blends with all the colors of the spectrum.

Pop art spread from the 2nd half of the 1950s in the UK and the USA.Synopsis:Pop art (popular art) was a neo-avant-garde art movement, which owes its name to the English term “pop”, meaning a light pop, a quick staccato sound. This is popular art, literally the art that has shocking effect of the explosion. Although pop art appeared in Great Britain (the first steps of the style were made in 1952 by the London Independent Group), the style was the most popular and developed in the USA. After the Second World War, when a powerful economic boom began in America, there was progress in technology and the rise of the media, the so-called “consumer culture” was born. Pop Art responded to the needs of people with high stable income and free time.Representatives of the style used typical household items of a modern person as the object of the image - the packaging of goods, utensils and things, fragments of interiors, details of various mechanisms, and so on. The second direction in the theme of the representatives of Pop art was the use of printed images of famous people – politics, musicians and actors. Such paintings were presented at the first exhibition of Pop art in 1956 with the title “This is tomorrow”.Many art critics reasonably believe that pop art is rooted in Dadaism, the nihilistic art movement of the turn of the 1910-1920s. As direct followers of Dadaists, pop art artists mocked the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism and, in a broader sense, the cultural situation. It is considered that art expert and member of the “Independent Group” Lawrence Alloway first used the term “pop art” in 1955. At the same time, he himself had in mind only the products of the media for commercial purposes, and not the new art movement.Key artists:Richard Hamilton, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Keith Haring, Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Tom Wesselmann.Key ideas:1) Pop art was a reaction to the profound philosophy and irrelevance of Abstract Expressionism that dominated in the avant-garde art. A whole generation of creators decided to return to the subject painting and, at the same time, add irony and frivolity to their works, adding a significant presence of kitsch.2) One of the most important concepts of pop art was that there is no hierarchy in art and culture as a whole - they can be fed from any source. Therefore, a distinguishing feature of the style is the combination of the challenge and ostentatious indifference. The boundaries between the "high" and "low" culture were erased. For the artist, everything is equally priceless and valuable at the same time, as well as equally beautiful or ugly.3) The new style has become a bold and bright challenge to traditional painting: it placed bets on familiar images from popular mass culture — advertisements, comics, latest news and everyday objects. In their compositions, representatives of pop art included clippings from newspapers and magazines and advertising posters, frequently using the technique of the multiple repetition of the image.4) The most striking forms of American pop art are stylized reproductions of comics using color monochrome planes by Roy Lichtenstein, works with the images of cans, bottles and boxes, “cut” from the real life by Andy Warhol huge sculptures of plumbing, plaster copies of fast food, made by Claes Oldenburg, plaster human figures of George Segal, and flat but erotic images of Tom Wesselmann's sex symbols.

1890-1910Synopsis:The direction that existed mainly in the visual arts and architecture. It arose as a reaction to Academism and included many other styles that appeared before. The two main trends of Modern Style are constructive (developed in Austria and Scotland) and decorative (existed in Belgium, France and Germany).Key Ideas:- Representatives of Art Nouveau refused from straight lines. They imitated the natural forms of plants. - Artists preferred pale colors. Basically, light pink, gray, pale green and lilac. - Architectural works of this direction are characterized by smoothness and decorativeness.Artists:Wlastimil Hofman

1870-1880Synopsis:This art movement appeared in France. The term "symbolism" emerged in painting thanks to the poet Jean Moreas. Works of the representatives of Symbolism are characterized by mystery and understatement. This is a combination of two worlds - the world of physical objects and the world of ideas. Artists were inspired by literature, legends, history and myths.Key Ideas:- Among the themes, there are religion, worries and emotions. With the help of art, the Symbolists strove to convey the cry of the human soul. - Artists found sense in fantasies. In their understanding, the perfect work is the one, in which not the outer shell of the depicted object, but its inner world is shown. - The meaning of a work is so hidden that it is not easy for an ordinary viewer to understand it.

1700 – nowadaysSynopsis:Such an art movement as Naive art started emerging in different countries in XVII. Among its most famous representatives, there are artistsHenri Rousseau (France), Niko Pirosmani (Georgia), Maria Primachenko (Ukraine) and Anna Mary Moses (USA). Almost all talented primitivist authors were self-taught.Key ideas:- The works of the representatives of Naïve art remind paintings of children, due to their simplicity and immediacy of perception of the world. It is diverse and differs by the expressiveness of the forms and images.- Primitive artists are usually inspired by the world and different literature, mostly myths and legends.- The distinguishing feature of this art movement is the presence of sacral symbols.- In the paintings of primitive artists, there is no linear perspective.

Cubo-FuturismAppeared in first decade of the 20th century.Synopsis:Cubofuturism is an art movement of Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde, combining the achievements of Italian Futurists and French Cubists. The artists of this style depicted objects using geometric segments and represented objects in motion. Cubo-Futurists tended to explore a wide range of expressive colors; this distinguished their work from paintings of Parisian Cubists, who often used a muted and almost monochrome palette.The first exhibition of new art “Link”, organized by the Burliuk brothers, was held in several cities of Ukraine, in St. Petersburg and Vilnius; in 1914, the newly formed group “Ring” organized its first and (due to the outbreak of world war) last exhibition, in which 21 artist took part. The most famous was the group of Cubo-Futurists "Gileia", whose members were also called “aveniriens”. This group that emerged in 1910 in the estate Chernyanka of the Tauride province (now the Kherson region of Ukraine), is considered the earliest and most radical literary and artistic organization of this style. Art historians claim that the destruction of form and time, which Cubo-Futurists promoted and applied in their own way, directly led to abstract works of such a unique style as Suprematism, and later on to Constructivism.Key artists:Kazimierz Malewicz, David Burliuk, Ivan Klyun, Alexandra Exter, Natalya Goncharova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Lyubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Puni, Mikhail Andrienko-Nechitaylo, Vadim Meller, Alexander Bogomazov.Key ideas:1) Cubo-Futurist artists received some freedom to interpret the reality in their own way thanks to the unique combination of the features and methods of two European multidirectional styles. Cubism, especially in its analytical stage, although breaking objects and figures in general, strove for constructiveness, for architectonics. Futurism, on the contrary, offered an extraordinary dynamic, a priori destroying the construction.2) The subject for Cubo-Futurists is not inert matter: their images in their plastic volume, even plain color fragments are filled with diverse and deep dynamism.3) Artists of this style, especially Ukrainian, sought to saturate the works with the colors taken from folk crafts (ceramics, embroidery, carpets, and pysanki), where they kept proximity to the mysteries of the elements of life. At the same time, they used not direct styling, but clarity and rhythm of loud-sounding colors.4) Cubo-Futurists preferred urban plots; some of them interpreted the urban theme as the place, where the personality develops, but might get destroyed, or even die.5) Representatives of this style actively used inscriptions – both full phrases and separate “scattered” around the composition letters and syllables.

Socialist realism is an art movement in painting, graphics and sculpture that arose in the USSR and absorbed the artistic space of other socialist countries, reflecting the aesthetic and moral facets of a socialist society.

Metaphysical painting was an art movement in Italian painting of the early twentieth century, the founder of which is Giorgio de Chirico. This movement borrowed the artistic techniques of symbolism and neoclassicism, and was a kind of reaction to the crisis of futurism.

Regionalism was the art movement of American painting of the 1920s-1940s, which sought to tell about the true life of America, despite the ideological, rapidly developing, avant-garde movements.

RayonismRayonism was an art movement of the Russian avant-garde, exclusively in painting. It was a young and short-lived branch of Abstractionism and the style of Russian artist Mikhail Larionov. His colleagues, members of the Donkey Tail creative organization, also used this style.Mikhail Larionov got the idea of the concept of Rayonism after visiting the exhibition of British landscape painter William Turner in London in 1906. The Manifesto of Rayonism, signed by eleven artists, was released in 1913.Art historians believe that Rayonism appeared under the influence of Futurism, Cubism and Abstractionism, partially starting from the latest scientific discoveries of that time. Techniques: oil, canvas. Genres: abstraction, animalistic, interior, figurative, still life.Key ideas:- The palette is characterized by brightness, mottling and tonality.- According to artists, the human mind perceives every object, including a picture, as a combination of light rays. In a work of art, the role of rays is played by multi-coloured paints.- In the paintings, we can trace modulations of the fourth dimension, based on the play of light spectra and light transmission. It seems that the painting is beyond time and space.- The special tonality of the rays and their refraction remind pieces of glass of different thicknesses, folded in two or three layers. Figurative Rayonism has features of Cubism, but with torn and sharper elements.

Сonstructivism was an art movement in Russian and world avant-garde, corresponding to its name from the Latin “construction”. The art movement is distinguished by recognizable features: geometric shapes, solidity, clarity, and distinctive laconicism.

NeoclassicismThe second half of the nineteenth - the first quarter of the twentieth centuries; the end of the eighteenth – the beginning of the nineteenth centuries (historically, there are various definitions of this movement in the world).Neoclassicism (the name derived from the French “Neo-classicisme”) was an art movement that revived interest in classical traditions in the art of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and the USA. In France, this was the style of the second half of the eighteenth century, the style of Louis XVI. In Russia and Germany, it is called a retrospective style of the beginning of the twentieth century.The formation of Neoclassicism is associated with the movement of the Pre-Raphaelites (mid-19th century), German Neo-idealists (the 1870s), the decorative redundancy of modernity and the demand for classical principles; it is partly associated with Rococo and Baroque (the manner of conveying colour and plot drama).Similar movements: Neo-baroque, Academism, Classicism, Baroque, American Renaissance. The aesthetic ideals of Neoclassicism were borrowed by the Impressionists. The emergence of Neoclassicism contributed to the strengthening of the opposition in the form of Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism.Art form: painting, graphics, sculpture, design, interior, jewelry; architecture, literature.Genres: historical, mythological, symbolic, religious, portrait, nude.The technique of some masters is comparable to photography since they sought to make the surface as smooth as possible without the slightest grooves left by the hairs of the brushes, while simultaneously achieving a clear image of the details.Key ideas:- Eclecticism - a combination of ancient art, Italian Renaissance, Academism and Modernism; Neoclassicism assimilated national epics, legends and individual contemporary heroes, corresponding to the nationality of the artist. The movement consisted of academic trends, for example, realism, chiaroscuro, rationality, moderation; from ancient art - strict plasticity, monumentality and canonicity.- Confrontation to the rapidly developing chaos was brought by avant-garde artists. The world of art was divided into true adherents of a clear plastic form of ancient art and masters who broke these forms, sometimes mocking, more and more moving away from Academism.- Characters of paintings and objects do not have flaws and defects. These are ideal single figures inscribed in a perfect space, without auxiliary distracting objects in the background.

Graphics is a type of fine art, the main artistic elements of which are contour lines, strokes, dots, spots, prints that are applied using certain media, for example: paper, pencil, charcoal, chalk, gouache, etc.

JaponismIt is an art movement that emerged in France in the 1850s as a combination of Impressionism, Post-impressionism and artistic techniques of Japanese colour woodcut ukiyo-e. The term was coined by critic Philippe Burty, who released a series of articles published in the journal Literary and Artistic Renaissance from approximately May 1872 to February 1873. Due to historical confusion, it is essential to know that Japanese painting and Japonism were separately existing artistic movements.Europe got acquainted with the art of Japan in the middle of the 17th century when this country began to export porcelain and lacquerware to Western countries. There is also a connection with photography, which allowed the world to see the land of the rising sun.European artists were fascinated by the aesthetics of Japanese graphics. They adopted its stylistic techniques, flatness, clear contours, asymmetry and colour purity. For example, some scenes: a woman at the toilet, a theater. Fans, umbrellas, screens, bamboo, kimonos became favorite fashionable items. Japanese art was embodied in the design of clothes and interiors, landscape design, illustration and posters (for example, those of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec).Japonism, in turn, influenced Art Nouveau, Cubism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cloisonnism, and Synthetism. Its representatives used the same media as Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.Key ideas:- Japonism was a symbiotic dialogue of cultures that brought a new aesthetic; it became the concept of the unity of art, which is the main idea of this movement;- The process of transferring and transforming Japanese graphics into oil painting by European artists sometimes does not allow us to attribute the picture to one or another movement; this only confirms the presence of the impeccable softness of eclecticism.

1849 – 1870SynopsisRealism is the truthful depiction of nature or people’s life. It avoids exotic and supernatural elements. Its boundaries are changeable and vague. Realist works of art might emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid aspects of life. The style of realistic painting has spread to almost all genres of fine art, including portrait, landscape and historical genre.The first artist to self-consciously proclaim and practice Realism was Gustave Courbet, a French painter.Key artists: Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet.Key ideas: 1) Realism is often considered the beginning of modern art, because realists considered everyday life suitable for depicting.2) Realists mostly used dark colors depicting the real life of 19th century. Such style deliberately confronted the ideals of beauty.3) This art movement combines individual and typical features in the creation of the image.

Orphism (Orphic Cubism)Orphism (from the French «orphee» - Orpheus) was a French art movement of the 1910s. It appeared as an offshoot of Abstractionism or Cubism (art historians argue) but interspersed with figurativeness. It was founded by Robert Delaunay and Frantisek Kupka. Its artistic techniques were adopted from Abstractionism, Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism. The term was introduced by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912, referring to the works of Frantisek Kupka.The central object of the orphic composition is a disk, which is the embodiment of physical vibrations and noise, movement dynamics, a particle of light. The combination of disks and planes is a cypher system that hides the song of life, and you do not need a key to understand this. Even though the main genre is an abstraction, one can also find Orphic landscapes and abstractly structured figurativeness, which speaks of its proximity to Cubism. However, unlike Cubists, the master does not use tonal and black-and-white solutions.Orphism was used in the design of textiles, wallpaper, posters, advertising, which contributed to the popularization of cooperation between artists and industry.Key ideas:- Artists used basic pure colours (the influence of Fauvism). They could be saturated and pastel; there was severe contrast when moving from one to another.- Orphism was an artistic anti-figurative transition, like in music, from Cubism to Abstractionism.- Orphism expresses the rhythm of life, invisible to the eye, through the intersection of curved, straight lines and planes, using the primary colours of the spectrum. The artist did not depict visual reality but created a new one.

1970 - 1985This art movement developed as a reaction against the conceptual art and minimal art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to imagery, figurativeness, a lively and emotional manner, bright saturated colors. They depicted recognizable objects using abstract painting techniques. Neo-expressionism flourished mainly in Germany, where its representatives are sometimes called “new wild”.Key artists: Anselm Kiefer Jean-Michel BasquiatKey ideas:The main features of Neo-expressionism are:– The denial of traditional standards of composition and design; – A dual and acute emotional mood in the reflection of modern life and values; – The absence of visual idealization; – The use of bright and sharp combinations of colors; – Objects were depicted in a primitivistic manner.

1924 - 1969Surrealists painted unnerving, illogical scenes. Their works are distinguished by the use of allusions and paradoxical combinations of forms. The aim of Surrealism was to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality”. Surreality is the combination of a dream and reality. Therefore, the main principle of Surrealism was the transfer of the reality dominating in people’s subconscious through free associations. The representatives of this art movement absurdly combined naturalistic images through collage and “ready-made” technology.Surrealism has developed under the great influence of the theory of psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. The founder of Surrealism was André Breton, a French writer.Key artists:Salvador Dalí Max ErnstKey ideas – The Surrealists considered art to be the main instrument of liberation. – The primary goals of the Surrealists were spiritual elevation and separation of the spirit from the material. – One of the most important values was freedom, as well as irrationality. – Often, the surrealists performed their work under the influence of hypnosis, alcohol or hunger, in order to reach the depths of their subconscious.

1917 - 1932Neoplasticism, also known as De Stijl (“The Style”), was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. It united artists, which grouped around the magazine “De Stijl”. The magazine and the art movement were founded by Theo van Doesburg and Pete Mondrian.“The Style” is characterized by abstract painting, large rectangular planes and the primary colors of the spectrum. Being a deeply spiritual man, Mondrian was determined to develop a universal visual language. He gradually reduced the elements into a grid of lines and basic colors by the principle of harmony. The artist saw lines and colors as elements possessing opposing cosmic forces. The vertical lines embodied the energy of the sun rays, while the horizontal lines were associated with the motion of the Earth. Yellow symbolized the energy of the sun, blue was a symbol of infinite space, red symbolized substance. The style of Mondrian was inspired by the theosophical teachings of mathematician and philosopher Mathieu Hubertus Josephus Schoenmaekers.Key artists: Piet Mondrian Theo van DoesburgKey ideas– Neoplasticism was based on the philosophical system of two basic contradictions forming our earth and everything earthly. According to philosopher Mathieu Hubertus Josephus Schoenmaekers, this is “the horizontal force line of the Earth around the Sun and the vertical force line of the earth, which has its origin in the center of the Sun. “ – The pictures contain only vertical and horizontal black lines intersecting at right angles. – Only three primary colors (red, blue and yellow) and two non-colors (black and white) are allowed.

1918 – 1925Purism was an art movement that influenced French painting and architecture. It was led by Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier created a variation of Cubist movement and called it Purism. Rejecting fantasy, purists tried to depict objects clearly and without details. Their works are characterized by flatness, a smooth rhythm of light silhouettes and contours of the same type of objects (jugs, glasses, etc.).Key artists:Amédée Ozenfant Le CorbusierKey ideas:– Purism should not be regarded as a scientific art. – Purists did not believe that returning to nature signifies the copying of nature. – According to Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, “Purism sought the pure element in order to reconstruct organized paintings that seem to be facts from nature herself.” – The aim of Purism was to form ideas clearly and realize them without deceits. – The artists rejected representational volume and mass, avoided using naturalistic colors.

1910-1940Abstract art is art that does not represent the real world, but uses mystical shapes, colors and other elements, regardless of the real object. The first abstract painting was done by Vasily Kandinsky in 1910.“Abstract art creates a new world, opposite to the real one. It obeys the general laws of the cosmic world. It is a very real, concrete world. Therefore, I prefer to call Abstract art a concrete art,” Kandinsky wrote.The first abstractionists assumed that artistic creativity reflects the laws of the universe, hidden behind the external, physical phenomena of reality. These patterns, intuitively comprehended by artists, were expressed with the help of abstract forms (color spots, lines, volumes, geometric figures) in their artworks.Key artists: Vasily Kandinsky Piet Mondrian Marsden HartleyKey ideas:– Aesthetically, abstract art is characterized by abstract universalism. – One of the goals of Abstractionism is to achieve harmony through the image of certain color combinations and geometric forms, causing the contemplator to feel the completeness of the composition. – Cubism was similar to Abstract art. Cubists sought to depict real objects with a multitude of intersecting planes, creating an image of straight-line figures which reproduced nature. – The ideas of Abstract art are reflected in the works of Expressionists, Cubists, Dadaists, Surrealists, Italian futurists, Orphists, Russian Suprematists and Constructivists.

1913 - 1940Suprematism was an artistic movement that focused on basic geometric forms such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, which are painted in a limited range of colors. This movement was founded by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, famous for creating “The black square”. At The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings in St. Petersburg, he exhibited 36 works in this style.Malevich rejected the use of object images. He believed that the unrepresentative forms of pure abstraction have great spiritual strength and the ability to reveal pure feelings. Suprematism became a style of pure abstraction, advocating a mystical approach to art which stood in contrast to Constructivism, where images served the political ideology of the state. According to Malevich, Suprematist paintings were the first step towards “pure creativity” and equalized the creative power of human beings and nature.Key artists:Kazimir Malevich Olga RozanovaKey ideas– There are two central energies in Suprematism: black and white. – The artist was freed from all ideas, images and representations and the objects arising from them. – Suprematism is divided into three stages according to the number of squares: black, red and white. – According to Malevich, Suprematist forms can be viewed and studied like new planets.

1909-1920This artistic and social movement originated in Italy in the early 20th century. Its founder – also the author of the word “Futurism” – was Italian poet Filippo Marinetti. The name itself implies a cult of the future and a bias against both the past and the present.Futurism is characterized by the rejection of traditional rules. The artists mostly depicted trains, cars and planes. They glorified industrialization, speed, noise, technology and the development of transport. Futurists practiced a range of arts, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music and architecture.Key artists:Giacomo Balla Umberto BoccioniKey ideas:– Futurists viewed wars and revolutions as powers that vividly rejuvenated the decrepit world.– The main artistic principles of this style are speed, movement and energy.– Futurist paintings are characterized by energetic compositions, where the figures are divided into fragments and intersected by sharp angles. Flashing shapes, zigzags, spirals and beveled cones dominate.– Motion is transmitted by imposing successive phases on one image – the so-called principle of simultaneity.

1886 - 1910Post-Impressionism is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists’ concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color. Due to its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content, Post-Impressionism encompasses Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists’ work. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne (known as the father of Post-impressionism), Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. The term Post-Impressionism was first used by art critic Roger Fry. This is how he referred to the works by the painters whose paintings were exhibited in London in 1910.Key artists:Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Emile Bernard Vincent van GoghKey ideas – Artists of this art movement tried to portray the most basic elements of the world. – In Post-Impressionism, the idea of refusing to depict only visual reality and momentary impressions were embodied. – Constantly competing with Impressionists for ways of expression, Post-Impressionists used decorative styling. They expressed their ideas, often depicting something imaginary. – The beauty of nature did not attract the artists; it was merely a way of perceiving the world.

Impressionism is one of the biggest trends in the art of the late 19th – early 20th century. This art movement appeared in France and then spread throughout the world. The roots of Impressionism date back to the 1860s, when young artists were not satisfied with the means and goals of academism. They began to search for a new style.The name of this art movement comes from the title of Claude Monet’s work “Impression, Sunrise”. Critic Louis Leroy mentioned the term in a satirical review published in Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.Key artists:Edouard Manet Oscar-Claude Monet Albert-Charles Lebourg Camille Pissarro Edgar Degas Mary Stevenson Cassatt Alfred Sisley Berthe Morisot Valentin SerovKey ideasImpressionists did not use the color black in their works. They created the colors they desired by overlaying paints on the canvas. The artists sought to develop methods and techniques which allowed them to depict the variability of the real world.They tended to do the following:1) Depict the essence of a subject more than its details. 2) Mix colors on the canvas as little as possible. 3) Paint on a white or light-colored ground. 4) Have colors of objects reflect naturalistic light. For Impressionism, it was not the depicted object itself but the way in which it was depicted that was important.

Synopsis:1601 - 1900Classicism was an artistic style of the XVII-XIX centuries. Its aesthetic ideal is the arts of ancient Greece and Rome. The basis of Classicism is the idea of Rationalism. Italian Renaissance painting is marked by its renewal of classical forms, motifs and subjects. From the point of view of Classicism, paintings must be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and consistency of the universe. The Classicism is interested in only eternal and unchanging themes. Each genre of this artistic style has strictly defined characteristics, the mixing of which is not allowed.

Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, furniture, jewellery, fashion, cars, movie theatres, trains, ocean liners, and everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners.

1600 - 1900Synopsis:Academic art, or Academism, was a European style of painting of the XVII-XIX centuries. It was based on the adherence to the external forms of classical arts. The representatives of this style were probably pondering on the art forms of the ancient world and the Renaissance.Academic art served as a guarantee of preserving the traditions of an art school, taking care of the cultural values of the past. On the other hand, its inclination to traditionalism caused the danger of the detaching of Academism from modernity. According to some critics, turning it into a conservative direction prevented the development of a living artistic process.Key ideas:– Academism embodied the traditions of ancient art, in which the image of nature is idealized. – Academism opposed Mannerism. The constructions and plastic forms used by it were addressed to the classical principles of the Renaissance. However, some baroque features are also felt at that stage of its development. – Academism cultivated historical, heroic, allegorical and mythological subjects, conditional idealized images and abstract norms of beauty.

This artistic movement includes many different styles, created by several artists who worked in different techniques. Such paintings combine some similarities.

This artistic movement includes many different styles, created by several artists who worked in different techniques. Such paintings combine some similarities.

Fauvism was the first twentieth-century movement in modern art. It was inspired by the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne.The name of Fauvism art movement comes from a name given to a group of artists who exhibited their canvases at the Autumn Salon in 1905. One French critic called them “the Fauves” (“wild beasts”) for the “wild” expressiveness of their colours. However, the artists themselves mostly disliked this definition. The Fauves were a loosely allied group of French painters with shared interests. Several of them, including Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault, had been students of Symbolist artist Gustave Moreau and admired the older artist’s emphasis on personal expression.

Expressionism was a modernist movement which originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. This movement appeared as a painful reaction of the artists to the ugliness of early 20th-century civilization, the First World War and revolutionary movements. A generation traumatized by the events of those times perceived reality in a highly subjective way, through the prism of emotions such as disappointment, anxiety and fear. The principle of Expressionism prevails over the image. The motifs of pain and screams are very common.The banality, ugliness and contradictions of modern life gave the Expressionists feelings of irritation, disgust, anxiety and frustration, which they transmitted with the help of angular, twisted lines, rapid and rough strokes, and screaming colour.

Cubism is a modernist trend in painting, originating in early 20th century France. It is characterized by the use of geometrized conditional forms and the desire to “shatter” real objects into stereometric primitives.

Art and science to build, design buildings

German surrealist artist with an unusual appearance. Also known as a model for a series of photographs of the Parisian surrealists, their muse.

Yakov Georgievich Chernikhov was a Soviet architect and graphic artist, author of scientific works on the theory of architecture and a talented teacher. His name is not well known in Ukraine, although he was born in the current Dnepropetrovsk region and lived in Odesa for about ten years, studied at the Higher Art School. Possessing powerful spatial thinking and imagination, Chernikhov devoted his life to creating bold architectural projects in the spirit of Constructivism and became the spokesman for the ideas of the avant-garde of the early 20th century, which influenced many modern architects.

Ellsworth Kelly was an American artist and sculptor, an outstanding figure in post-war abstract art. His paintings with large abstract figures, bold and contrasting combinations of colours, influenced the development of Minimalism, colour field painting and hard-edge painting.

Eduardo Paolozzi was a Scottish artist, designer and sculptor of Italian descent, whose work covers a wide variety of areas of fine art, from large-scale sculptures to the design of fabrics and wallpapers. As an innovative artist, Paolozzi always looked for something fresh, yet unknown in the art. Due to his insatiable thirst for change and constant experiments, his work is heterogeneous and resembles a colourful mosaic, consisting of different styles, motifs, genres and art movements.

Frank Stella is an American artist, the main representative of Minimalism, known for his paintings of a non-standard format and large-scale compositions that combine the features of painting, sculpture and architecture.

Франк Ауэрбах - британский художник и гравер еврейского происхождения, уроженец Германии, яркий представитель «лондонской школы авангардистов», совмещающий в своих произведениях экспрессионистскую абстракцию и фигуративную живопись. Наряду с Люсьеном Фрейдом и Френсисом Беконом, является ключевой фигурой модернистского искусства Великобритании.

An innovative American artist, designer, publisher, filmmaker, producer, writer and collector. Andy Warhol, the founder of the homo universale ideology, was an outstanding personality in contemporary world art in general and the history of pop art in particular. He also entered the history of art as the creator of "commercial pop art".

An innovative English artist, one of the first representatives of Romanticism, who was unknown during his lifetime but had a great influence on the development of European avant-garde art. William Blake is better known to the general public as a poet, whose works reflected original philosophical views, but the images of the master’s paintings and graphic works are not less deep and bright.

One of the main artists of American pop art, known for images of stylized female nudes, which were the central theme and subject of close attention of the painter. Drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, especially works of Willem de Kooning, the artist rethought the images and created his unique style, incredibly realistic, alluring and at the same time cold and detached, not affecting the deep feelings of the viewer.

An outstanding Uruguayan artist, sculptor, art theorist and writer Joaquin Torres Garcia lived and worked in Europe for a long time (Spain, France, Italy), for some time in the United States of America. In Barcelona, the artist worked with A. Gaudi; while living in Paris, he collaborated with representatives of Neoplasticism (Piet Mondrian and others), founding the creative group “Circle and Square” with the support of Michel Seophor. Such a wide experience allowed him, returning to his homeland, to become a conductor and propagandist of new art in Uruguay - modernist art movements in general, Cubism and Abstract art in particular.

Sonia Terk-Delaunay (Sarah Ilinitchna Stern), a French avant-garde artist, illustrator, sculptor and designer of Jewish origin was born in Ukraine. The master worked in the styles of cubism, orphism and abstractionism. There are a few facts that eloquently testify to the great significance of her contribution to the development of avant-garde art: she became the first artist whose lifetime exhibition was organized in 1964 in the Louvre, and ten years later she was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. She was among the organizers of the international association "Abstraction-Creation".

Solomon LeWitt, an American artist, sculptor and theorist, played a leading role in the development of Conceptual art and Minimalism. Coming from a family of Russian-Jewish emigrants, he was inspired by the works of Russian avant-garde painters and Constructivists, especially Malevich, whose Black Square served as the basis for the emergence of his unique geometric aesthetics.

Cy Twombly (his real name was Edwin Parker Twombly) was an American painter and sculptor, one of the most incomprehensible artists, whose paintings cause constant debate and discussion in the art world. Most of his works are white canvases, covered with multi-coloured scribbles, lines and chaotic spots. The artist often uses various inscriptions in his works, making them look like urban elemental art of graffiti. Moreover, the name and meaning of the works are referred to ancient myths, classical paintings and cultures of various nationalities.

One of the first and most prominent representatives of Pop Art, which gained wide popularity in the USA in the 1950s and 60s of the 20th century. Roy Lichtenstein became famous for his comic book paintings, each of which reflects various aspects of the life of ordinary Americans. Using simple and understandable images, the artist challenged avant-garde painting, intelligible only to a few, and turned everyday things into real works of art.

Robert Rauschenberg is an innovative artist, one of the most influential American masters of the second half of the 20th century, who gave impetus to the development of Pop art and Conceptual art. Throughout his long career, he experimented with almost all available forms of art, acting as an engraver, designer, sculptor, photographer and even avant-garde musician.

An English artist, one of the founders of the British pop art style. Peter Blake began his career in the post-war period, and the primary goal of his art was to help fellow citizens forget the horrors of war and plunge into a bright and, if possible, carefree, peaceful life.

Barnett Newman was an American painter, lithographer and sculptor of Jewish origin, a prominent representative of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting. In the history of fine art, the master is called the model of high modernism, the forerunner of minimalism, an existentialist and spiritual artist, drawing inspiration from Jewish mysticism.

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian and American artist, famous all over the world thanks to her extraordinary and shocking performances. She is rightfully considered one of the best in her genre, and her ideas related to physical pain and even a threat to life and health make viewers rethink their perception of many things and step far beyond the boundaries of the common understanding of the world and themselves.

An Italian painter and sculptor, author of theoretical works on art. Lucio Fontana is considered the most radical artist after Kazimir Malevich, who managed to bring art to a new round of the development of abstraction and minimalism. The name of Fontana is associated primarily with his cut paintings: the artist unsparingly cut them with a sharp blade or pierced his canvas with a knife. But he did not intend to destroy his works. He just wanted to expand the pictorial space of his painting, to make them voluminous and evoking different associations.

A Hungarian artist and graphic illustrator, sculptor and master of art photography, film theorist and journalist. Born Laszlo Weisz. He was one of the largest figures of the world avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century, as well as the most important representative of the New Vision photo.

Frantisek Kupka was a Czech artist and writer who lived and worked in France for most of his life. He is rightly considered one of the pioneers of abstract painting in the history of fine art and one of the first completely unrepresentative artists. In 1912, he participated in the Golden Section Cubist exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants, exhibiting, among others, the works that are considered the first abstract paintings.

Gustavs Klucis was a painter, graphic artist, illustrator and photographer. He entered the history of art as a pioneer of photomontage. In the world of art, he is considered one of the four artists who invented the subgenre of political photomontage in 1918. Three other names are known more widely - German Dadaists Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann, Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky.

One of the first American abstract artists, Clyfford Still was the central figure of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. The style at the origins of which he stood became the leading art movement in the United States, from the 1940s to the 1960s, until it was supplanted by Pop art and Minimalism that were more positive, understandable to the masses.

Американский скульптор шведского происхождения, выдающийся представитель поп-арта. Клас Тур Олденбург начал свою карьеру в Нью-Йорке, где он участвовал в многочисленных хэппенингах и перформансах с такими художниками, как Джим Дайн, Аллан Капроу и Джордж Сигал. Он стал неотъемлемой частью движения поп-арт в начале 1960-ых годов, противопоставляя свои простые и привычные для восприятия работы сложной эстетике абстрактного экспрессионизма. Выставив в витрине «ненастоящего» магазина «ненастоящие» вещи, созданные из самых неожиданных материалов, художник по-настоящему удивил публику и мгновенно приобрел широкую известность.

American artist, sculptor and designer Keith Haring was mostly known for his graffiti paintings attracting with their rhythm, sincere and actual style.

Kenneth Noland was an American artist, a bright representative of Colour field painting. He created an alternative to abstract expressionism and action painting, practising strict abstraction, the absence of an object and a subject in art, bright colours evenly applied to the surface of the canvas. Following American artist Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland began to use acrylic paints, which made it possible to create a thin and saturated coating, eliminating the appearance of random spots and smudges on the canvas surface.

A modern American artist and sculptor. Lives and works with his wife, artist Charlene von Hale, in New York, as well as in Martha, Texas. The art of Christopher Wool includes art movements related to pop art, abstraction, and post-conceptual concepts.

Yoko Ono is an English and American innovative artist, writer, and musician of Japanese descent. Yoko became known to the general public largely thanks to her marriage to John Lennon, a musician and member of the legendary Beatles band. However, long before this union, she clearly showed her talent in Conceptual art, becoming one of the pioneers of installation and performance.

Edward Hopper was an American artist, a prominent representative of genre painting, one of the largest urbanists of the XXth century. Although his work was officially referred to the style of “realism”, Hopper offered such a great look at life between the world wars that he inspired countless artists, photographers, directors, stage designers, dancers, writers and even musicians.

An outstanding French artist, sculptor and photographer. Despite his short artistic career (1954-1962), he is rightly considered one of the most significant innovators of post-war European art.

David Hockney is a contemporary English and American artist, an author of famous paintings in the style of pop art with images of sparkling blue pools, attracting the viewer with their coolness in the middle of a hot afternoon. His paintings, smooth and shiny like magazine pages, mesmerize you by their simplicity, clarity and plenty of sunlight.After moving from England to California, the artist became interested in photography. The original technique of shooting with the subsequent overlay of frames allows Hockney to create unusual collages that no one had done before him - these are half-photographs, half-paintings.A constant admirer of Cubism, the artist creates works with a renewed perspective, combining several images into a single whole. His innovative approach to the collage method made the artist a recognized master of photography at the end of the 20th century.Being one of the most influential and expensive artists of our time, David Hockney is constantly inventing new techniques and experimenting with various styles. Since 2009, the artist has surprised the public with computer paintings created using an application on a regular tablet. Hockney’s work, like his bright personality, is of constant interest in society, which expects discoveries and bold challenges from the ageless artist.

David Salle is an American artist, photographer, stage designer, author of original collage paintings based on the aesthetics of Pop art. Like many artists of his generation, he drew inspiration for his rich visual language from famous works of art, arbitrarily adding elements of advertising and everyday culture to them. Salle's techniques in contemporary graphic design are also original.The name of the artist has become famous since the mid-1980s. His paintings filled with humor, theatricality and eroticism are multifaceted and contain a large number of cultural references. In paintings of David Salle, you can find references to the works of such classics as Velazquez and Bernini, allusions to the themes of Post-impressionists Cezanne and Giacometti, motives of Surrealist Magritte, as well as vivid images of American post-war art.The almost photographic accuracy of the images in the paintings of Salle, which paradoxically creates a sense of unreality, is breathtaking. The longer you look at the master’s works, the more and more exciting details, hints and parallels you find. Creating his works, the artist acts intuitively; this makes his works close to Surrealism and Classical Expressionism.David Salle is known not only as an artist but also as an authoritative art critic and art theorist. According to him, any painting should be created, first of all, for the people, and not for "abstruse" art critics. Therefore, his works are aimed at explaining the meaning of the works of past years in an accessible and understandable way, emphasizing their importance for contemporary art and tendency to continuity.

Donald Judd was one of the most famous American abstract sculptors of the late 20th century, a designer and art theorist. He is the leading representative of Minimalism, although he himself never referred himself in this movement. Judd did not call himself a sculptor, believing that his art fundamentally does not fit the definition of sculpture since his works were not made by him personally but were made of ready-made objects.Donald Judd described his creations as “a simple expression of complex thought” and composed them from industrial materials. A characteristic feature of the artist’s style is focusing not on the depicted object itself but on the space that he creates around himself. The most famous series of his works “Specific Objects” and the vertically placed “Racks” demonstrate his radical approach to modern sculpture, which fundamentally changes the very essence of this art form. Donald Judd explained his complicated abstract art in numerous theoretical works. He published a number of essays, as well as two volumes of the Complete Works in 1976 and 1986.Since 1970, the artist began to create sculptural compositions for installation on open air. Few people know that the popular “loft” style of interior appeared largely thanks to Donald Judd. He was the first to convert an industrial building in New York into a living space and a studio, where he worked and exhibited his sculptures. Here he worked for 25 years, and after the artist’s death a museum was organized in the building, which not only demonstrates his creations but also allows visitors to understand the very essence and history of such an art movement as Minimalism.

A modern American artist, architect, musician, photographer and film director. Julian Schnabel is known not only for painting but also for his films, one of which is dedicated to his friend, talented artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died at the age of 28. Despite the fact that Schnabel made a successful career in cinema - he was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe in 2007 - he considers himself primarily an artist who is pleased to engage in interesting projects in the field of art.Schnabel brightly declared himself immediately, appearing on the New York art scene. With his defiant behavior, frankness and selfishness, he attracted many enemies and also got numerous fans. He became an example of a bohemian artist, was friends with Andy Warhol and did open self-promotion.In the 1980s, Schnabel was one of the leading Neo-Expressionist artists reviving figurative painting. His vivid, expressive nature, provocative statements and shocking behavior immediately attracted the attention of society and were reflected in his works. Julian Schnabel became famous for his so-called "plate paintings", which he created from fragments of broken dishes. Instead of the canvas, the artist used unusual materials: animal skins, tarpaulin, velvet and linoleum.The work of the American master covers a wide variety of areas. He is the architect of a huge pink house in Manhattan, the Maybach car designer, the author and performer of musical compositions, the director of several films, the plot of which tells of unusual people who find themselves in extraordinary and strange circumstances. His work is often provocative and ambiguous. Often they are sharply criticized and controversially discussed, but they never leave the viewer indifferent.His active public life, participation in various contests and events also contribute to the popularity of Julian Schnabel and do not allow the public to forget the name of the artist, no matter what he does.

An American artist and sculptor, one of the most popular and expensive masters of our time. Jeff Koons is a representative of Neo-pop art, which is a continuation of Pop art and focuses on the interests and needs of modern society.The artist’s works are mainly installations and sculptures. The subjects of art for Koons are everyday things, which in the author’s interpretation become symbols of a certain phenomenon that occupies the minds of ordinary people. The most famous works of the artist are brilliant metal sculptures made in the form of balloons. The most well-known one is the “Balloon Dog” figure, which attracts with its simplicity and festive mood.Jeff Koons treats his work as a commercial project, distributing and advertising his art as a special type of product. According to the author himself, his work does not express any deep ideas and subtext. They are a beautiful but meaningless thing, for which the artist is often called the "master of kitsch". Many art lovers openly hate Jeff Koons for selling tasteless sculptures for a great deal of money and often using works by other authors to create his statues. However, despite all this, the works of the American sculptor are in high demand from the public, which forces art critics to change their ideas about what contemporary fine art looks like.

Joseph Kosuth is an American contemporary artist, one of the pioneers and a vivid representative of Conceptual art. He is known throughout the world for his installations; in particular, his composition "One and Three Chairs" has become a classic example of the style. As a 23-year-old student, he received a grant from the Cassandra Foundation with the “blessing” of master Marcel Duchamp to implement his innovative ideas.The artist was the first to deeply explore the relations between ideas, images, and words used to describe them. He used words instead of visual images of any other kind, that is, he completely excluded objects in order to focus on the meaning conveyed exclusively by the language. The awards given to the artist most eloquently speak of the recognition of Joseph Kosuth's unique talent. The main ones are the Brandeis and Frederic Weisman Prizes, the Menzione d'Onore at the Venice Biennale, the title of Cavalier from the French government, the highest award of the Republic of Austria for achievements in science and culture. Since 2014, the neon installation of Kosuth is a part of a permanent exhibition at the Paris Louvre.Many of the installations of Kosuth included excerpts from literature and works on philosophy and psychology. The quotes are filled with an important universal meaning – this is how the artist makes his audience reflect on the problems of personal identity, poverty and racism, loneliness and the lessons of history. Avoiding any clear or too explicit comments of his own, Joseph Kosuth realizes himself both as a modern artist, philosopher and moralist.

A German artist, one of the most famous and expensive contemporary painters. Gerhard Richter showed his talent in several styles of fine art. His photorealistic portraits with blurry contours are exhibited at the most famous museums in the world, and abstract canvases are sold at auctions for a lot of money.Starting his career in East Germany, the artist worked in a realistic style; however, having become acquainted with the works of contemporary artists Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, he sharply changed his painting towards avant-garde art. A few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he fled to West Berlin, where he started to search for his place in art. Based on photographs and products of popular culture, Richter created a vivid style, which included both realistic and completely abstract expression.In addition to painting, Gerhard Richter is known as the author of several major design projects. In 2007, he created the famous "Pixel Stained Glass" in Cologne Cathedral, which got the most controversial reviews. Instead of traditional biblical scenes, the artist created an impressive mosaic of multi-coloured glass, which consists of 11 thousand 250 coloured squares of eighty shades. It is interesting that the artist performed the work as a gift to the cathedral, without taking a dime for his painstaking labour.

Guy Orlando Rose was a prominent representative of California Impressionism (also called the California open-air school).The future artist was born into the wealthy family of Senator Leonard J. Rose. His career began quite early, when, having been wounded while hunting, young Guy Rose began to be interested in painting.An admirer of the artistic talent of Claude Monet, Guy Rose worked mainly in the genres of landscape, including urban, and portrait, was a good draftsman. In the canvases of Guy Rose, there is liveliness, naturalness and play of light peculiar to Impressionism. The artist used a rich color scheme, painted landscapes, female portraits. Several times exhibited his works at the Paris Salon, participated in exhibitions in his homeland, including the World Exhibition in San Francisco, where he received a silver medal.

A German Neo-expressionist artist and avant-garde sculptor, one of the founders of the New Wild group. The real name of the artist is Kern, and he took the pseudonym from the name of his native town of Deutschbazelitz, located near Dresden.The artist’s “calling card”, which makes his paintings instantly recognizable, is human figures located upside down on the canvas. Georg Baselitz began depicting people in this way around 1969.The uncompromising and rebellious spirit of the future famous artist led to the fact that Georg Baselitz was expelled from the art school; his works “What a night fell” and “Naked Man” were banned as obscene, and seized by the police during his first exhibition.Forced to work in the official style of socialist realism while living in East Berlin, the artist switched to abstract art after moving to the western part of the city. Gradually, Baselitz rejected both movements and began to revive German Expressionism, which flourished before the war but was objectionable to the Nazi government. The human figure took the central place in the work of Baselitz, and the paintings became scandalous and defiant.Georg Baselitz played a key role in the development of German art after the Second World War, expressing national identity with the help of symbolic and expressive images.The artist's works were often criticized because of their repulsive and unaesthetic content; however, at the same time, they inspired a lot of European and American artists, contributing to the revival of figurative art.Today, Georg Baselitz is an internationally recognized artist whose work is one of the most expensive works of contemporary painters and sculptors. He continues to work tirelessly, creating a kind of "remake" of his compositions of past years.

A famous British sculptor of Indian descent, a member of the New British Sculpture group, the author of modernist works in many large cities around the world.Rethinking the rational approach to minimalism and the provocative sound of Conceptual art, the artist added his vivid emotions, unique worldview and the charm of primitive art.The sculptures of Anish Kapoor are a peculiar game of forms, colours and textures. His work, made of a variety of materials, combines the desire for freedom, harmony and balance of objects in space. The famous work of the artist - "Cloud Gate" in Chicago nicknamed the "bean" is a vivid example of the inventiveness of its author. It creates an alternative reality and attracts viewers by its "dialogue with the cosmos". Anish Kapoor is a laureate of various contests and winner of several major awards in the field of fine art. During his long creative career, the artist was awarded the Order of the British Empire and created a large-scale art installation in the United Kingdom. The exhibition of his works became the most popular in the history of the state.Anish Kapoor does not cease to strive for discoveries and impressive finds. He has all the ideas and original ideas that no doubt surprised and “blew” the whole world.

Mykhailo Fedorovich Andriienko-Nechytaylo was a Ukrainian artist and avant-garde stage designer. The central part of his artistic career was in France, where he was a representative of the Paris School of Fine Arts.Together with Kovzhun and Musyka, he organized the Association of Ukrainian Artists and helped young fellow artists who immigrated to France. Five paintings by Andrienko-Nechitailo, which appeared in the Lviv Art Museum, where the exhibitions of this association were held, were destroyed in 1952 as “formalist” and “without value”.Along with Alexander Arkhipenko, Mykhailo Andriienko managed to mirror the various directions of avant-garde painting of the 20th century in his multifaceted work. His solo exhibitions, except for a few in Paris, were successfully held in Rome, Berlin, Geneva, Amsterdam, and Chicago.A series of works by Mykhailo Andriienko in the style of neo-realism under the general title "Disappearing Paris" is of historical value as an art document of the capital of France.In the field of theatrical scenery, the works of Andriienko-Nechytailo occupy one of the first places in contemporary European art. The master proposed not only a great art form but also introduced a new understanding of the stage space in the chamber theater.Andriienko was a man of high culture and a multi-talented person. He fruitfully worked as an art critic and writer. Specialists characterize his stories and psychological novels as examples of highly artistic prose. His critical articles on art and aesthetic observations were published in the emigrant magazines Renaissance, New Life, and in the Munich Ukrainian journal “Suchasnist”.Being in the center of European cultural life, Andrienko luckily avoided imitations, having developed an original creative manner. The Ukrainian artist was one of the outstanding masters of the fine art of the XX century. His paintings and graphic works are in museums in Paris, New York, London, Rome, at the National Museum in Lviv (Ukraine), in numerous private collections.

An American artist and theorist, the central figure of the avant-garde of the 60s, the discoverer of the happening - a form of art in which the primary attention is paid to the process of creation. Allan Kaprow appreciated the moment of action in painting, putting it above the result.The fleeting, often quick and spontaneous actions of Kaprow erase the line between art and everyday life and immerse participants in the work, involving them in the creative process and destroying the notorious “fourth wall” between the work and the audience.In his theoretical writings, Allan Kaprow said that after the discoveries of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, painting could no longer exist in its original form. It must go beyond the canvas and move into everyday life.The master called himself “non-artist” and his works “anti-paintings”. “Life is much more interesting than art”, said Kaprow and created events outside galleries and museums: in courtyards, apartments, streets, squares and parking lots. Sometimes his works are even absurd - such as building houses from ice under the scorching California sun; they change the very perception of art and turn everyday life processes into creative acts.The principles of the creation of happening, which Allan Kaprow outlined in his work “How to Make a Happening”, were enthusiastically accepted by many post-war artists who tried to take a fresh look at modern creative methods. Thanks to the discoveries of the American innovator, such styles as installation, performance and conceptual art were further developed.

An American contemporary conceptual sculptor and artist. The art of Bruce Nauman includes a wide range of creative interests: performance and installation, photography and art video, works for the media, printing and industrial production. In all areas, the artist was attracted by the nature of communication, problems of the language and the role of the artist as a manipulator of visual symbols by the means of communication.Nauman received numerous awards in several areas of artistic practice and an honorary doctorate in arts from the American Art Institute. His works are widely represented around the world at the expositions of the most prestigious museums and galleries. The monumental creations of Bruce Nauman inspired many other artists in the second half of the 20th century and continues to be in demand in the 21st century. In 2004, Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the art world. In 2006, according to the rating of Artfacts.net, Bruce Nauman was number one among living artists.

An outstanding British sculptor, one of the key figures in the avant-garde art of the country. Sir Anthony Caro was known for his innovative solutions, which were much ahead of their time and set the stage for future changes in three-dimensional art. Being for some time an assistant to his famous compatriot Henry Moore, the sculptor became a follower of his undertakings in the field of avant-garde sculpture, expanding the framework of the traditional idea of ​​this art.Caro's most famous works are large abstract sculptures painted in one bright colour and standing on the ground, without any pedestals, allowing the viewer to take part in the composition. The sculptor created his works in accordance with the environment in which they were supposed to be installed. He always insisted on the direct connection of architecture with sculpture, and even coined a special term for works that are at the junction of these two types of art - “Sculpitecture”.Of great importance were also the many years of Caro’s teaching activity. His unconventional approach to form and space opened up new possibilities and had a great influence on young sculptors. Among his students at different times there were such outstanding personalities as Philip King, Barry Flanagan and Richard Long, called the "new generation" of English sculpture.

A Swiss sculptor and lithographer, artist and graphic artist, collector of archaic and ancient works of art, a prominent representative of the avant-garde in his country and Europe. The artist spent more than a decade in Paris, became a member of a Surrealist group organized and headed by Andre Breton. The latter included one of Serge Brignoni's lithographs in the famous illustrated book “Surrealism in 1947”.The artist as a representative of the Paris School was a participant in the Venice Biennale and prestigious international exhibitions of surreal art in England and America. His contribution to the development of avant-garde art in Switzerland is considerable.Close to Surrealism at the artistic and intellectual level, Serge Brignoni used complex metamorphoses of the image of the world. Veins and branches, eyes and viscera, sea creatures and endless cosmic landscapes, spaces and figures, animated by floral fragments, show his attention to nature. A wide range of methods he used to create works of art - sculpture, collage, engraving, painting and drawing - gives S. Brignoni’s works the status of “analog biology”.In 1985, the Swiss artist donated his most valuable and vast collection of art from Oceania and Indonesia to Lugano - in this city, the Museum of Non-European Cultures “Villa Heleneum” was opened four years later.

An outstanding French sculptor, the founder of modern sculpture. Auguste Rodin is rightfully considered the greatest creator of his time, who destroyed the stereotypes in his work and became a model for subsequent generations of sculptors around the world.The unique ability to convey the plasticity and lines of the human body, as well as the complex experiences of the soul, were the main features of the sculptor’s manner. Rodin's work was strikingly different from the traditional canons of Academism. His work expressing the free energy of life and vivid emotions, as well as intimate moments, met with misunderstanding and criticism of contemporaries. Only at the end of the life of the master, his works were appreciated and great success.For a long period, Auguste Rodin worked on a large order - the entrance to the building of the new museum of decorative art in Paris, which was called the "Gates of Hell". The master went so deep into his work that he continued to refine and redo it for eight years. Despite the fact that the museum’s project was never implemented, the elements of the gate, including the famous Thinker, became separate works of art that won the hearts of millions of people with the naturalness of their plasticity and openness of feelings.

An Italian painter, sculptor and graphic artist of Jewish-French descent, who lived and worked in Paris. One of the most famous artists of the early 20th century, who developed his characteristic style with a clean line, a meditative atmosphere and with elongated shapes.Modigliani originally intended to be a sculptor. Encouraged and inspired by Brancusi, for almost five years of his short creative career, he began carving his heads out of stone, but dust of limestone and sandstone damaged his lungs, weakened by tuberculosis, and coughing fits did not let him work. In addition, during the First World War, marble was almost gone; the stone became expensive and was inaccessible to the poor master. The artist started painting but did not change his style - his portraits are as recognizable as sculptures.The artist’s works were almost unsuccessful during his life - at two exhibitions, he sold only a few sculptures. Having become extremely popular after his early death, a few (about 30) stone sculptures remain so even now. One of the “Heads” by Amadeo Modigliani, sold by the Christie auction house for more than 43 million euros, became an absolute record for sculpture. In the study of art, the understandable term “Modigliani style” is used; it is rather conditionally related to Expressionism.

A French Catalan-born sculptor, master of tapestry, painter and book illustrator. He was a member of the Nabis group created by Paul Gauguin's followers, although he did not use their sculpting techniques.Maillol appeared in the second and main period of his creative career as one of the most original sculptors and is considered an author who made a revolutionary "return" to classical sculpture at a time when art had a vector of movement towards Abstractionism. He strove for harmony, proportionality, simplification of visual forms, gravitating towards grandeur at the end of the 19th century.Some also catalog him as the forerunner of such sculptors as Henry Moore (blog entry made on November 15, 2009). Although, if we delve into his biography, we will know him as a versatile artist who dominated all disciplines, although he finally found a way to his style in sculpture.Thanks to the efforts of a friend and muse of the master, Dina Verni, who throughout her life was engaged in propaganda of the work of Aristide Maillol, in 1995, the museum of the sculptor, master of decorative and applied art and painter was opened in Paris. She presented 18 sculptures to the French people on condition that they will be permanently exhibited in the Tuileries Gardens.Aristide Maillol's humanistic in essence and execution art had a huge impact on the work of many of the largest sculptors of the 20th century.

An outstanding Russian sculptor and graphic artist, who had earned the glory of “Russian Rodin” even before the revolution. Sergey Konenkov was a master of monumental compositions, portrait and plot genres, masterfully worked in wood, using folk carving techniques. As a portrait painter, he created a whole gallery of images of his contemporaries (F. Chaliapin, M. Gorky, S. Rachmaninov, A. Dovzhenko, K. Tsiolkovsky, V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin), compatriot writers (I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin). His outstanding monuments to A.S. Pushkin, V.I. Surikov and others are also known.Sergey Timofeevich lived and worked in the United States of America for more than 20 years, mainly in New York. To order of the Princeton University Administration, in 1935, he created a bust of the great scientist Albert Einstein, with whom he was friends; later he created Einstein’s full-length sculpture.During the war, the sculptor was an active member of the American Committee for Russian Assistance. In 1945, a ship was chartered for Konenkov and his works by order of Stalin.The sculptor, who became a full member of the Academy of Arts in the pre-revolutionary 1916, after returning to his homeland, became an academician, People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, and an honorary citizen of the city of Smolensk and laureate of state prizes.The sculptures and drawings of the master are in the leading museums of Russia, in several museums and government agencies in the United States and other countries of the world. Works are constantly exhibited at the memorial Moscow House Museum “Creative Workshop of Konenkov”, and the Smolensk Museum of Sculpture opened at the insistence of the artist, who gave a large collection of works to his native city.

An American sculptor and designer of Japanese descent. Isamu Noguchi was one of the most prominent and famous sculptors of the twentieth century in the United States. Throughout his life, he was engaged in art experiments, created original sculptures, design of furniture and ceramics, architectural and landscape projects. His extraordinary and bold style combined traditional and avant-garde elements, setting a new standard for contemporary art.Noguchi did not lose touch with his historical homeland and spent a lot of time in Japan, opened a studio there. The artist regularly traveled around the world. The harmony of Japanese gardens and ceramics, the subtlety and grace of Chinese calligraphy, the gracefulness of Italian marble sculptures, the monumentality and brilliant simplicity of the art of the Indians of ancient America were reflected in his work.The sculptor's work was widely appreciated in the United States in 1938 after he created a large sculpture symbolizing freedom of the press for the Associated Press building in New York. This work was the first of many public facilities installed in various cities around the world. The works of Isamu Noguchi, from children's playgrounds, city squares and squares to complete garden complexes, reflects his faith in the social significance of sculpture, which makes art accessible to everyone.

An American artist, designer and avant-garde filmmaker. Joseph Cornell worked primarily in installation and assembly techniques, using everyday things in unexpected combinations. He had no art education, worked as a seller of fabrics and showed his artistic talents only by the age of thirty, creating a new and interesting style in contemporary art, which had many followers.The impact of Cornell's works on the subconscious and mysteriousness makes him related to Surrealists and Dadaists. However, the self-taught artist never referred himself to any of the modernist or avant-garde movements. He led a very secluded life on the outskirts of the city with his sick brother and mother; rarely spoke in public, but maintained friendly relations with most modern American artists. Cornell was a deeply religious man and an ardent supporter of "Christian science", which left a significant imprint on his entire work.Joseph Cornell is best known for his original installations, where in a small often closed on all sides space everything acquires an entirely different meaning and causes a wide variety of associations. The artist’s most famous works are glass boxes in which he placed various objects: old photographs, newspaper scraps, and other small items. These “shadow boxes,” as the author himself called them, had a great influence on the development of installation, assemblage, and other types of contemporary art.

A Swiss sculptor, painter and graphic artist, one of the largest sculptors of the 20th century, a vivid representative of the avant-garde.Giacometti, who studied the art of painting and sculpture in Geneva and Paris, experimented with cubism and futurism, was interested in primitive sculpture technique. For some time, he worked with a surreal French group and created strange objects testifying to cruelty, interest in eroticism and at the same time the author’s dreaminess and humanism.After he suddenly departed from Surrealism, Giacometti again created more figurative and vital works. The mature master created his most famous works - a series of elongated and fragile figures, similar to skeletons and made not by carving but by modelling in clay or plaster without thorough study and smoothing of the surface of sculptures and figurines. These works are extremely highly valued in the art market, and viewers are always incredibly interested in them.Giacometti wrote articles for catalogues of many exhibitions and periodicals, outlining extraordinary thoughts, and also kept diaries where he introduced memoirs, observations and explanations to his works. They are an important document of the avant-garde era in art and culture.The most highly regarded (literally and figuratively) outstanding classic of world sculpture was so extraordinary that he did not have direct followers, but influenced the entire world of fine art. He was the idol of Salvador Dali, Henry Moore and other famous artists.

A French painter, an outstanding draftsman and sculptor, one of the original and most prominent representatives of Impressionism, although the artist rejected this term.The artist began to pay more attention to the genre of sculpture after his vision had deteriorated by the beginning of the 1970s. The theme of these creations repeated his favorite themes of the paintings - women at their toilet, ballet dancers, horses and jockeys on them. Degas created these works for himself, replacing etudes with modeling, so he completed only a few sculptures, and exhibited only one - “The Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer”, which was criticized by experts.Wax figures (about 70) found by his heirs in the master's workshop were fragile, and it was decided to immortalize them in bronze, with which Degas never worked. The first cast samples appeared in 1921, and the originals were considered lost for a long time. However, the foundry master managed not to damage the fragile wax, and in 1954 they were found in the cellars of the foundry.All the originals put up for auction by the artist’s heirs were acquired by American collector Paul Mellon. He presented several works to the Louvre, and the largest collection, 52 statuettes, is in the Washington National Gallery.According to the agreement with the foundry, each of the wax sculptures was reproduced approximately 20-25 times - out of almost 1,500 copies, many are exhibited in major museums around the world. For example, in Copenhagen's Glyptotek, there is a complete set of them, although the debate about whether copies can be signed with the name of the master is still ongoing.

A Russian sculptor of Jewish origin, an artist, stage designer and art theorist who worked in different countries of Europe and for a long time in the USA.Gabo was one of the pioneers of modern sculpture. Instead of wood, stone or bronze, he used new industrial materials - acrylic glass, plastics and nylon threads. In his abstract spatial constructions, mass and volume - these "cornerstones of traditional sculpture" - turned out to be half-transparent, seemed weightless even with significant weight. A truly unique feature of Gabo's work is that he was inspired not by nature but the concepts of the exact sciences.With his ideas on contemporary sculpture, Naum Gabo revolutionized the general understanding of sculpture and its perception, having earned a place in the catalog of “100 artists from ancient Greece to the present, who played a significant role in the development of sculpture, painting and photography” published in the USA.The leader of the world avant-garde art, N. Gabo belonged to a group of Russian Constructivists (he was an ally of Tatlin, Malevich, Rodchenko) and representatives of the German Bauhaus; moreover, he was a member of the Paris group "Abstraction" of Amsterdam's "Style". Gabo decisively influenced modern English sculpture and was awarded the title of "Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire". In addition, the artist became one of the pioneers in the creation of kinetic visual art.

A Russian sculptor-muralist, master of the portrait genre in marble and bronze, professor, an author of theoretical works on monumental art.The natural talent allowed Vuchetich to become one of the most prominent representatives of "Soviet classicism", whose works are known in many countries of the world. He was repeatedly awarded the Grand Prix of international exhibitions; his merits were evaluated by six USSR state awards, as well as the J. Nehru Prize.The sculptor was awarded medals and orders (including as a participant in the Great Patriotic War), was Vice-President of the Academy of Arts; he became a Hero of Socialist Labor and People's Artist of the USSR. In his works, Yevgeny Vuchetich depicted the most significant events in the history of his country; the images of his works symbolize the military and labour heroism of the people. Such subjects determined the dramatic nature of his creations, which, however, always were life-affirming.The most significant in scale are his sculptural ensembles in Berlin Treptower Park and on the Volgograd Mamaev Kurgan. The sculpture "Motherland Calls" was inscribed as the tallest non-religious statue in the world in the Guinness Book of Records.

A Russian sculptor-muralist, master of the portrait genre, as well as the author of innovative household plastics - vases, glasses, glass figurines.The sculptor taught by prominent Russian and Parisian masters preferred the monumental genre and introduced some techniques of cubism and futurism into the sculpture. She became famous for her impressive monuments, the main of which is “Worker and Collective Farm Girl”, for which the author was awarded the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition in Paris. She also won the Venice Biennale.Over the years, the artist was a member of the art associations "Monolith", "Four Arts", the Society of Russian sculptors, the "Team of Eight", became an academician and got the title of People's Artist of the USSR.The sculptor created dozens of portraits of war heroes, scientists, artists, in which the image of outstanding people is realistic and emotional.Vera Ignatyevna was awarded the USSR State Prize five times for individual works, orders and medals not only in her country. She taught at the sculptural faculties of several educational institutions, was an author of theoretical articles on monumental sculpture.The Vera Mukhina Museum was opened in Feodosia, where she lived for a long time; a crater on Venus was named in her honour.

An outstanding world-famous Romanian sculptor, who made most of his creative career in France. He is one of the main founding artists of the abstract sculpting style and the brightest representative of the Paris school.Konstantin Brancusi, who was famous in avant-garde art of the 20th century, led the sculpture to revolutionary simplification of forms. This was not a simple exercise in plastic design but a real interpretation of the rhythm of the modern life. At the same time, the master, who worked in stone, bronze and wood, showed the highest technical skill. Through the emphasized formality and the apparent poverty of a shape, he revealed the inner beauty of the materials he used, freeing it from superficial manifestations. The proof that the art of Brancusi was not just empty abstraction but was filled with high content is the extraordinary popularity of his works during the life of the master and now. The pioneer of abstract sculpture was widely known in Europe, America, and also thanks to his admirer and follower I. Noguchi in Japan; but he never forgot his roots. The sculptor received large orders from Romania, including for park memorials.The artist’s legacy is also in demand in the 21st century. Despite the fact that the author frequently copied his sculptures, they are estimated at tens of millions of euros or dollars in the modern art market.Since its opening, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris has a separate room with sculptures by Constantine Brancusi - the author bequeathed his works to the French people.

A German sculptor, engraver, graphic artist and playwright. The artist that engaged in figurative art is considered a prominent representative of late Expressionism, closely associated with traditional Gothic German Middle Ages.From the 1910s, Barlach’s work gained a great publicist scope. He constantly appealed to the consciousness of mankind, striving to expose the severity and depth of the problems of modernity. Like Expressionism in general, his art is characterized by high spiritual and ethical ideals.Bertolt Brecht, who called Barlach one of the greatest sculptors who have ever worked in the country, said about his works, “Beauty without embellishment. Greatness without moralizing. Harmony without gloss. The power of life without cruelty".In 1930-1931, to the 60th anniversary of the master, large exhibitions were held in German cities, in Essen, Venice, New York, Zurich, Paris. The fact of such widespread recognition did not stop the Nazis from harassing the artist, who became an "internal emigrant". He continued to do things that were hated by the authorities and the fundamentalist public.His plays were banned; his sculptures were removed from public collections and destroyed as "degenerate art". The press wrote, "we hope that all traces of his terrifying works will be removed"; the sculptor was called only "anti-German" and "semi-idiot". However, Barlach, having refused membership in the Academy of Arts, decided not to leave the country, upholding the right to free creation.In the post-war period, Barlach museums were established in both German states in the city of Gustrow (GDR) and Hamburg (Germany). A separate museum building was erected near Gustrow, where about 400 sculptures, about two thousand sketches and manuscripts of the creator are stored. The Ernst Barlach Society still exists.

A world-famous Ukrainian artist and sculptor, an outstanding representative of Cubism and Abstractionism in sculpture and painting, who worked in France, Germany and the USA.Works of A. Arkhipenko turned over the established understanding of sculpture, showed the possibility of composing a single of various nonequivalent forms, using glass and wood, metal, fabrics and paper in one composition. The expressive constructivity and at the same time lyricism, extraordinary plasticity in the transmission of movement are the main qualities of the works of the artist and sculptor.The works of Arkhipenko, highly appreciated by his contemporaries Picasso and Duchamp, Leger and Rodchenko, Delaunay and Gris, enjoyed constant attention, caused positive feedback in the press and monographs. The innovative artist held over one and a half hundred solo exhibitions; he had and has many followers and researchers.The artist generously shared his extraordinary vision of visual creativity - his private studios in Paris, Berlin, various cities of America, as well as lectures and masterclasses with which he traveled around the cities, were attended by thousands of beginners and venerable sculptors and painters.He never lost touch with his compatriots - he was a member of the Ukrainian Student Club in Paris, a member of the Ukrainian Community in Berlin; in the USA, he joined the Association of Ukrainian Artists, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, worked at the Ukrainian Institute of the USA. He created four busts of Taras Shevchenko (one is installed in the Park of Nationalities in Cleveland), portraits of I. Franko, Ukrainian public figures. In Soviet Ukraine, the name of Arkhipenko was not mentioned until the thaw of the 1960s; five works from the Lviv Museum were destroyed in the 1950s, as were twenty-two works from German museums in the 1930s.

A famous English sculptor, one of the most prominent people in the art of Great Britain of the 20th century. Barbara Hepworth worked in those times when female artists, especially sculptors, were rare. Along with her contemporaries Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore, she considerably influenced the development of British art in general and abstract sculpture.Hepworth’s favourite materials were wood and stone, from which she created biomorphic abstract compositions using the cutting technique. The artist developed the principle of "hollow form" and for the first time created a through sculpture, which is widely used by many sculptors of our time. Hepworth coordinated her extraordinary and mysterious images with the surrounding space and gave them a resemblance to natural forms and lines. The sculptor’s work is characterized by a special rhythm characteristic of the laws of nature itself.Together with her husband Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth was the leader of the St. Ives Artists' Colony, where she lived from the beginning of World War II until her death. She was also one of the founders of the Unit One art movement, whose participants were avant-garde artists and sculptors, and which managed to combine Surrealism and Abstractionism in British art.

A famous American artist and sculptor, whose works adorn squares of the cities of the USA, Europe and Latin America. A son and grandson of sculptors, Alexander Calder, was educated as an engineer and applied his knowledge in the field of sculpture, which allowed him to create a completely original, innovative approach to this kind of art.Calder became known worldwide as the inventor of "wire sculpture". Having abandoned the traditional heavy materials - clay, gypsum and bronze, he created airy designs in which the shape of the object is depicted very simplistically and schematically. His wire figurines resemble a pencil drawing in space and amaze you with their laconicism and elegance of execution.Another invention of the sculptor is the so-called "mobiles" – those are dynamic constructions that are driven by the force of the wind, the laws of gravity and in some cases by an electric motor. These works are completely abstract and small in size, in contrast to the more stable and monumental "stables" of the sculptor, which perfectly complement the urban landscape. One of the most famous and large-scale creations of Alexander Calder is his work "Man", located in the center of Montreal.

An outstanding Polish artist, sculptor and reformer of tapestry art. The textile sculptural forms of abakans were named after the artist. Large coarse-grained works were striking in their appearance, reminding the viewer organic repeatedly enlarged structures. The world art community highly appreciated the novelty of technology and plot ideas by Abakanowicz in the first half of the 1960s, having awarded the artist the main awards of the international biennale.The significant freedom that provided Polish artists with the opportunity to travel to western countries contributed to the development of Magdalena’s unique talent. She has been to Paris and Venice, Munich and New York, participated in art events outside the Eastern Bloc and received “injections” of other art, very different in form from the socialist realism adopted in Poland.Abakanowicz always emphasized the metaphorical nature of her works with names, since all her works are the result of thoughts “about the circumstances that form various human conditions”, a reflection of her personal life with her history of fears and suffering.Art critic D. Vrublevskaya determined, “M. Abakanowicz’s art is based on biology. But she is a creator; therefore, she explores a person through a form and uses instinct in her research.” The relentless ingenuity of Abakanowicz is determined by her creative credo, “I do not like principles and rules. These are enemies of fantasy. ”The artist was awarded many prestigious awards; her works adorn cities of Europe, Japan, the USA, Israel, and South Korea - she gave lectures and masterclasses in many of these countries.

The most famous and significant English sculptor of the post-war period, one of the founders of modernist British sculpture. Moore significantly influenced the gradual transformation of British sculpture from provincial to avant-garde, which not only corresponded to European concepts of modern art, but also introduced its themes and means of plastic expression.Moore became world-famous thanks to his sculptures designed for open space, which are installed in many large cities around the world. These works, depicting mainly semi-abstract human figures, impress you with the harmony of their forms and musicality of smooth, winding lines. They reveal the eternal themes of the beauty of nature and the attractiveness of the female body, the spiritual closeness of a man and a woman, the selfless love of a mother for her child - all that makes our world more beautiful.The sculptor preferred to cut his works from a whole piece of wood or stone, and began to use plaster and bronze casting only in the late period of his career. In addition to sculpture, Moore is known as a wonderful draftsman. His most significant works were impressive images of London citizens hiding in subway stations during Nazi bombings.

An outstanding French sculptor, painter, draftsman and teacher. After working for 15 years at the workshop of Auguste Rodin, first as his assistant and student, and then as his colleague, Antoine Bourdelle became an influential figure in the European art community.Bourdelle's Paris Studio Studio was visited by such students as Aristide Mayol, Vera Mukhina, Alberto Giacometti, who became outstanding sculptors, as well as artists Henri Matisse, Vadim Meller and dozens of others.The sculptor’s outstanding talent is evidenced by a large number of orders received by him for monumental buildings of national importance and a considerable number of works performed for capitals and cities around the world.The legacy of the master, who did not object to the repeated replication of his most outstanding works, is represented in museums around the world with his castings of bronze figures and compositions, as well as the copies of his works of later years.The artist became the full holder of awards of the Order of the Legion of Honor of France, was the founder and vice president of the Tuileries Salon in Paris. He created portraits of such prominent people as O. Rodin, G. Efel, and others.The house with his workshop in Paris, in which the sculptor lived and worked from 1884 until the end of his life, became an art museum, where there are many ready-made works, as well as sketches for them, made in terracotta, clay and plaster. The garden adjoins the museum, which also became the place to exhibit sculptures by Antoine Bourdelle. The second garden-museum of the sculptor was opened in Égreville thanks to the efforts of the heirs; 56 works by the master are presented there.

A Filipino artist, a bright representative of Cubism. Having been educated in the USA, Canada and Europe, the artist was in the forefront of the modernist movement in his country and played one of the key roles in the development of contemporary art in the Philippines. Manansala is known as the author of "transparent cubism", in which images are superimposed on each other and create a feeling of lightness and weightlessness. His paintings combine the most modern world art trends with local flavor and a deep understanding of the psychology of the people. Many works by V. Manansala reveal the theme of human deprivation and extreme poverty in post-war Manila. The artist’s colour palette is distinguished mainly by bright, sunny shades inherent in the nature of his motherland. Manansala's paintings are filled with spiritual light and sincere sympathy for the depicted characters. The artist believed that the true beauty of art arises in the process of its creation, and the central theme of each painting is love.

English painter William Roberts, revered for his large, complex and colourful compositions that he exhibited annually since the 1950s at the opening hours of the Royal Academy, was at the beginning of his career among the pioneers of the English art avant-garde. A member of Fry’s studio “Omega” and Vorticism group of Wyndham Lewis, Roberst positioned himself as a Cubist and for most of his very long creative career worked outside the mainstream.The artist, who had long served as the official military painter, was also elected a full member of the Royal Academy and awarded prizes. Roberts' works are not only in the collection of his London House Museum, but are also widely represented at the prestigious Tate Modern Gallery and other English and American museums and galleries.

An American artist who was born and worked in France, one of the most famous representatives of Surrealism. Yves Tanguy never studied painting professionally. However, when he once saw the work of Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, he left the service in the merchant fleet and devoted himself to painting forever. Brave, bright and eccentric, the artist intrigued and shocked the audience, both with his extraordinary work and unpredictable behavior.Tanguy was one of the first to use the technique of “automatic painting” in his work, a method in which the artist paints associative images not thinking about what he is depicting and allowing the subconscious to penetrate the canvas freely. The result of these experiments was the appearance of surreal objects and non-existent animals, which the artist placed on the background of an incredibly endless landscape.During the Second World War, the artist left dangerous Europe. He permanently moved to the United States - the homeland of his wife Kay Sage, who was also a Surrealist artist. In America, Tanguy often arranged exhibitions of his paintings together with other artists of this art movement and had a significant influence on the formation and development of modern painting, especially Abstract Expressionism. His extraordinary fantastic works made him an internationally famous and financially successful artist.

A Belgian artist-innovator, a bright representative of Surrealism. Pictures of Paul Delvaux are inspired by secret desires, subconscious fears and vivid impressions from childhood. The painter’s art is famous, first of all, for its naked women, silent and motionless, like statues, in an atmosphere of mystery and emptiness.Most of Paul Delvaux’s creative career developed during World War II and the occupation of his home country. This was one of the reasons why an anxious mood and restless motives appeared in his paintings; although this was expressed not in a direct way but through an appeal to the psyche of a man and his subconscious.Even though Delvaux never officially belonged to surrealist groups and did not even associate himself with this movement, he was close to many of the surrealists. The artist closely communicated with Rene Magritte, who had a noticeable influence on him, and Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism.In his work, the artist did not use abstract objects, as his colleagues did. On the contrary, the master’s paintings are striking in their realism and correctness of forms. Paul Delvaux created the stunning atmosphere of mystery in his works using his methods, combining extraordinary images with the symbolism and incomprehensibility of the plot.

A famous artist (painter and graphic artist), art theorist, talented teacher, a prominent figure in the cultural process of the first quarter of the 20th century. A native of Russia, Viktor Palmov is rightly considered a classic of the Ukrainian avant-garde. The artist developed his theory of "colorization" and was the author of several articles on the problems of the theory of new painting, published in the magazine "New Generation". The master’s works were among those “arrested” and were banned from showing at galleries and museums on a par with the canvases of A. Bogomazov, D. Burliuk, A. Exter, and “Boychukists”.

An Italian artist associated with the second generation of futurism. Luigi Colombo signed his work with the pseudonym Phillia, using his mother's maiden name for this. From an early age, he was interested in theatre and achieved certain successes in this, but later became interested in Futurism and devoted himself to the fine art. The artist was a co-author of several manifestos of Futurism and wrote many art studies that reveal the essence and features of modern art.In Turin, where Phillia mostly worked and lived, he organized a futuristic society, thereby making an important contribution to the development of this art movement in the region. He made several long trips to Paris, where he came into contact with the most influential avant-garde masters. Among his colleagues, Colombo stood out for his extreme activity in the field of art. He always remained at the center of cultural events, both Italian and foreign, organized various events, was the editor of several periodicals.The artist’s style gradually evolved from sharp futuristic works to abstract canvases with smoother lines and organic colours. In mature works, Phillia studied the subjective inner world of a person, his subconscious and psychological aspects.

A Spanish (Catalan) painter and sculptor, whose work had a huge impact on the entire generation of modern artists. Joan Miro's paintings are the earliest surrealistic works. They served as the basis for the further formation and development of the style that is extremely popular to this day.Joan Miro tried his hand in various modernist and avant-garde styles of European painting, but never stopped on one of them completely, constantly improving and enriching his artistic method, experimenting with different painting techniques and methods. The result of these experiments was his painting style based on surrealism. This is what allowed the artist to rethink the basic principles of fine art in accordance with his original vision of the surrounding reality.The unique world of Joan Miró is full of unique images and symbols. They are presented in the form of pure plastic signs located in an empty space; they are not completely abstract but rather resemble naive art or drawings of children. Miro’s paintings consist of geometric, right or wrong figures, a dance of twisting lines and small details that have mystical meaning and create an indescribable atmosphere of each work.

An English avant-garde artist, a graphic illustrator, closely associated with British Vorticism. Together with Jessica Dismorr, she formed the “female” part of a group of 11 artists who signed the Vorticist Manifesto. Helen Saunders published her artwork, as well as poetry and prose in BLAST magazine. As a representative of early British Abstractionism, she became one of the first authors in the country working in a style very close to non-figurative, and she reached certain heights in this, developing her style in the mainstream of ideas of Post-Impressionism and Vorticism.An important contribution of the artist to the social life of the country was her active support of the struggle to provide women with suffrage.The non-durable Vorticist movement, initially often seen as a “muscular” manly affair, was supported by two women in such an innovative and compelling manner that so far none of the retrospective exhibitions dedicated to this Anglo-American movement could be held without their paintings. One of the largest ones, “Vorticists: rebel artists in London and New York, 1914-1918” (2011), was exhibited not only in the United States and Great Britain but also in Italy.According to Helen Saunders, the movement represented "a very segmental group of artists, each of whom developed their ideas under the auspices of the vortex".

An English avant-garde artist, an active participant in the non-durable but radical movement “Vorticism” that appeared in London just before the First World War.Edward Wadsworth not only signed the Manifesto of the new association, but also created graphic compositions for Blast magazine, working closely with its chief editor, Wyndham Lewis. Having placed the magazine “Explosion” in Wadsworth’s hand in his canvas “Vorticists in the restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring, 1915”, his colleague W. Roberts emphasized his significant role in the group. This was fundamentally important in the 1960s, when interest in the movement became more intense.The artist traveled a lot and contributed to the further development of the British avant-garde, introducing ideas of Surrealism into it. He was a member of such significant creative associations as the Paris group Abstraction-Création.

An Italian artist, an outstanding representative of the second wave of Futurism in painting, one of the first Surrealists in his country. Enrico Prampolini was an unusually gifted man who showed his talent in many branches of art. His contemporaries knew him as a theater set designer and designer, as well as an architect who created several fundamental works. Together with Gerardo Dottori, the artist worked in the style of aerial painting, creating works based on the feeling of flight, the features of the air perspective and speed.Prampolini was one of the authors of the Manifesto of Mechanical Art, which proclaimed the dominance of machines in the world of the future and the close connection of new technologies with painting. The artist believed that contemporary art should be based on the use of mechanical elements from the world of industry. In his works, he praised the coherence and rhythm inherent in the work of mechanisms.The painter’s art developed in close contact with the avant-garde movements of Europe. Prampolini knew Paris Cubists, and also took an active part in the work of the German Bauhaus movement. Being a supporter of the abstract geometric construction of the composition, which is characteristic of Italian Futurism, Prampolini gradually moved to a complete abstraction, including elements of surrealism.

An Italian painter, a forerunner of Surrealism. Together with Futurist Carlo Carra, Giorgio de Chirico was the creator of metaphysical painting - the most original and important style in Italian art of the early twentieth century. Despite the fact that this style did not last long, it became the main one for the artist and brought him worldwide fame. De Chirico's metaphysical paintings had a great influence on Surrealists, who saw in them the expression of the unconscious and illogical that they aspired to.The work of Giorgio de Chirico originates in German philosophy, in particular in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as in the work of Symbolist Arnold Böcklin. From them, he drew interest in the symbolism of objects and the interaction of the form and environment. Like his teachers, the artist paid much attention to the process of self-improvement and observation, trying to comprehend the inner harmony of the universe.Closely connected with the Paris avant-garde movement, de Chirico created original art, which inexplicably combined his love for classics and the feelings of emptiness and loss that are characteristic of contemporary art. In the artist’s paintings, deserted streets and towers coexist with symbolic objects and mannequins, which are not connected logically. All this, created in bright colours, creates a sense of artificiality of reality and its conventionality.

A Belarusian painter, graphic artist, illustrator and stage designer of Jewish origin, a master of applied and monumental art of the 20th century. Marc Chagall became one of the most internationally recognized creators. When many of his fellow peers conducted ambitious experiments, often leading to abstraction, he sacredly believed in the power of figurative art, which he supported with his work.Despite the avant-garde ideas he perceived, he remained a romantic. Born in Belarus, Chagall worked in Russia and France, where he immediately became a prominent figure at the École de Paris, and later in the United States and the Middle East. Travels confirmed his image of the archetypal "wandering Jew", who believed that art destroys borders and estates.The influence of Marc Chagall is as vast as the number of styles that he assimilated in his art. Never completely agreeing with any movement, he mixed many of the visual elements of cubism, fauvism, symbolism and surrealism into his lyrically emotional aesthetics with the invariable presence of Jewish and Slavic folklore.Chagall, like Picasso, is a vivid example of a modern artist who created many works - paintings (oil, gouache, watercolour), frescoes, etching, stained glass, ceramic products, theater decorations and costumes.

An Italian painter, architect, sculptor and art critic. He worked mostly in Milan and Rome. The work of Mario Sironi overcame several cardinal changes during his long career. The artist made the greatest contribution to Futurism, enriching and supplementing it with his original finds, as well as to metaphysical painting, becoming its bright and original representative. He was also one of the creators of the “Novechento” style that tried to change the diversity of modernist movements with a more rational “return to order”.Mario Sironi was a master of the industrial landscape subtly feeling the rhythm and atmosphere of his era. His paintings are distinguished by twilight mood and dark tones, contrasting sharply with the bright and enthusiastic canvases of Futurists. Using a rather limited palette, thanks to his sense of colour and form Sironi managed to create a unique atmosphere of alienation and emptiness of the modern world.Like many of his colleagues, the artist supported the fascist regime and created murals and mosaics commissioned to the order of the government. After the fall of the Mussolini regime, he experienced a great shock and disappointment, which negatively affected his work, but he continued to actively paint until the end of his days.

A prominent English artist, a famous art critic and theorist, who is considered the author of such a term as post-impressionism, as well as the forerunner of a special kind of British Futurism - Vorticism.Becoming interested in French art movements, Roger Fry was able to organize an exhibition in London with paintings of several artists from Parisian groups. Despite harsh criticism, the artist repeated such an exposition two years later and thereby helped Post-impressionism and Cubism “to storm” British fine art. The artist depicted the second exhibition; that painting is now included in the collection of the Paris Orsay Museum.Of great importance for the formation of the British avant-garde was the work of the «Omega Workshops», a design studio organized by Fry, where representatives of the national avant-garde such as W. Bell, W. Lewis, D. Grant, and W. Roberts, began their careers.Professor and art historian Roger Eliot Fry wrote theoretical works, essays and lectures, which were very popular not only in the UK but also had a significant influence on many artists as well as art historians from around the world. Among the books characterized by the clarity of prose, in which the author demonstrated his brilliant knowledge of history and extraordinary analytical abilities, there is his study of the work of Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and others.

An Italian painter and sculptor, a representative of the second wave of Futurism and an outstanding participant in the movement of aero painting. Known for his realistic work that combines speed, aerial perspective and the mechanical aesthetics of war.The name Tullio Crali is inextricably connected with the theme of airplanes, which he repeatedly used in his work. Having made his first flight in 1928, the artist forever fell in love with the sky and the powerful roar of machines and decided to convey this impressive experience to the viewer with the help of painting.Crali joined Futurists at the age of 19, and, despite his youth, played a significant role in its development. At the beginning of his career, the artist painted military aircraft, praising the aesthetics of air combat and romanticizing the actions of Italian air forces. After the end of World War II, Crali remained faithful to the aesthetics of Futurism. His later works focused on the transfer of complete immersion in airspace from the point of view of the pilot. The works of Crali are distinguished by a dizzying perspective and expressive dynamics. His contribution to art is not only painting but also voluminous autobiographical works revealing the features of futuristic fine art.

Wyndham Lewis, the most famous English modernist, played a prominent role in both painting and literature. He is best known as the founder and the main representative of Vorticism, a specific branch of Futurism in the art that went far enough beyond its borders. Despite conventional methods, the idea of ​​this English avant-garde movement is not to glorify the mechanization of society, but in its detrimental effect. The name of the work that derived from the Italian «vortizto» (whirlwind) is taken from the statement by W. Boccioni, an Italian Futurist, that all creativity comes from a whirlwind of feelings. Through the journals he published, Lewis influenced the development of the pioneering British movement as a whole.He mostly created portraits – he depicted key representatives of the culture of England in the first half of the 20th century, whom he knew personally. In the plot genre, the most powerful is his cycle of works on military subjects: the artist participated in the First World War.

An English innovative artist, painter and graphic artist, a book illustrator. Jessica Dismorr was one of two women who became active members of the Vorticist movement and signed their Manifesto in 1914. Dismorr's fame is based on her status as an artist - a prominent representative of the early British avant-garde.Beginning as a Fauvist, Jessica worked a lot as a co-editor of the Blast magazine, which was aggressive towards Academism; in that magazine, she published her artwork, prose and poetry. Later, she created a recognizable form of geometric abstraction, which required not only talent, but also courage.Art historian H. Wilensky commented on her role as “the courage to overcome discrimination against female artists in England” and emphasized the importance of her work as “the most typical for artistic experiments of the time”. Due to the claims of W. Lewis (“this is what I personally did and said in a certain period”), it is not surprising that Dismorr was almost invisible in the history of modernism for quite a long time. However, a research conducted in the 1960s and an ongoing research, as well as major exhibitions, pay tribute to this artist and the second Vorticist, Helena Saunders.

An Italian Futurist artist, decorator and master of murals. The name Gerardo Dottori is inextricably connected with the historical region of Umbria, where he was born and lived most of his life and where most of his paintings are kept. In Perugia, his hometown, he founded the avant-garde art magazine Griffa, which carried out the task of spreading the ideas of Futurism in the region.The artist signed the “Aerial Painting Manifesto” in 1929 and became one of the leaders of this movement chanting speed, height and the feeling of flight. His most famous works are original images of Italian landscapes, often viewed from a great height. Bright, saturated shades of emerald and blue, which the artist used in his works, as well as fantastic landscapes, became the hallmark of the master.Dottori called himself a "rural futurist”. He never admired the roar of machines, urban bustle and noise. The artist preferred the calmness and contemplation of the hinterland where the time has a completely different speed, and nature and people do not change for centuries. For a long time, the artist’s work was among the little-known outside his homeland; however, in recent decades, the interest of Art Nouveau connoisseurs in bright and original works of Gerardo Dottori increased significantly.

A Russian painter, master of landscape, art theorist and art critic, theater artist. The artist’s creative career and personal life were happy. He was successful from his student years, appreciated after the revolution, got various honours (prizes, orders, titles); he avoided all the persecutions that swept the country in waves. However, he was never an opportunist – the painter worked in his manner and mainly on “his” themes – landscapes and architecture, paying much less attention to plot and portrait painting.The style of Konstantin Yuon, close to realism and moderate impressionism, acquired a certain colour either of symbolism or of primitivism, but always remained “living” and genuine.Numerous works of the master are in the collections of large Russian museums and galleries; they are presented at regional and former republican museums of the post-Soviet territory.

A Russian avant-garde painter of Ukrainian origin, a graphic artist and art theorist. The name of Aleksander Shevchenko is found in the catalogues of all significant exhibitions of progressive associations and groups - "World of Art" and "Union of Youth", "Jack of Diamonds" and "Donkey’s Tail”. Undeniable is Shevchenko’s contribution to the theoretical justification of the value of primitive art, the further use of the techniques of cubism and futurism, as well as the theory of “colour dynamos” based on a combination of the latest and archaic forms of pictorial art that he developed together with A. Grishchenko.Shevchenko became the organizer and chairman of the "Workshop of painters", who advocated easel art. As a teacher, he invited many of his students to join this movement. Despite his departure from the radical avant-garde, he was criticized as a "formalist" more than once.Paintings of the master are presented in the largest collections of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum and many regional galleries and museums in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

An Italian artist and composer, poet, art theorist, one of the leaders of Futurism. Luigi Russolo was an extremely multi talented person, his talents included painting, music, literature and science.He was one of the most original representatives of Futurism, its founder and theorist. Music works of L. Russolo was approved and respected by great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the famous Parisian ballets. Russolo's famous manifesto entitled “The Art of Noise” became the basis for the emergence of a number of musical trends that appeared many years after the death of their author.The artist’s contemporaries remembered him as a bold experimenter who was not afraid to present his painting and music inventions to society. Together with Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla and other artists, he became the author of the “Technical manifesto of futuristic painting”, which was published in 1910.Russolo suggested introducing sound colours of the industrial world into art: the sounds of cars and trains, the noise of wheels, the sounds of factories and factories, the buzz of a busy crowd. His painting is distinguished by close connection with music and the extraordinary refinement of style and harmonious colour solutions.

An Italian painter and graphic artist, a representative of Futurism and Metaphysical painting. A creatively active artist and painting theorist, Carlo Carra was one of the most famous artists in Italy in the early decades of the 20th century and an influential member of the futuristic movement.The artist’s style changed dramatically several times over his long career. He survived several successive periods: early Neo-impressionism and Symbolism, Futurism, Cubism, metaphysics and neoclassical painting.The artist made the most significant contribution to Futurism. In his paintings, he skillfully combined the original techniques of cubism with dynamism and the bold innovation of futuristic ideology. Carra’s canvas of the futuristic period is filled with incredibly bright and energetic images, chaotic movement and wild emotions.During the war, he met with Giorgio de Chirico, with whom he founded a style known as metaphysical painting. Since then, he painted still lifes and interiors filled with ominous emptiness and mysterious silence. In the late 1920s, the artist completely abandoned the avant-garde art and defended the conservative aesthetics of Novecento.

A Russian avant-garde artist, painter and graphic artist, a stage designer, who worked in Paris for many years. In the history of Russian art, the name of N.S. Goncharova is closely associated with the name of M. Larionov: they worked together for 60 years, first in Russia, then in Paris. Unusually talented creators, collaborating, helped one another to establish their individuality.The artist called the Amazon of the avant-garde, a member of the Jack of Diamonds and Blue Horseman groups, a Futurist and Cubist painter, was a bold innovator in painting, a brilliant decorator that till now impresses art lovers with a rare variety of her great artistic talent.The so-called «Russian style» never existed in professional fine art before Goncharova's «Rooster». Inheriting the traditions of lubok art and using folk ideas about religion, the folklore of Egypt and her favourite Scythia, she, undoubtedly, combined all into a single harmonious style.

A Russian theater artist and set designer, painter and graphic artist, People's Artist of Russia. Golovin, who collaborated with V. Meyerhold and S. Diaghilev, was not only the greatest master of theatrical and decorative art but also one of its reformers. He possessed a keen sense of style, inexhaustible imagination and rare stage intuition, which always allowed him to find a single artistic solution to the production that influenced the work of the director. The name of Golovin is associated with an almost 20-year period in the development of Russian theater culture.As an easel artist, Alexander Golovin preferred Impressionism and Art Nouveau; however, he painted some portraits (for example, of his friend Nicholas Roerich) in a completely realistic manner.The peculiarity of Golovin as a portrait painter is in the fact that he created magnificent portraits of artists (ballerinas, actors) as the characters they played. The most significant are the images of Chaliapin - Golovin painted him as Mephistopheles, Holofernes, Boris Godunov, Farlaf, etc.Easel paintings by Alexander Golovin are in the most famous collections of Russia, and his sketches for costumes and stage became independent paintings of considerable value.

A talented and original Ukrainian artist, a bright and influential representative of avant-garde painting and scenography. Her career was marked by constant innovative searches, as a result of which she made a significant contribution to the development of both Ukrainian and Russian painting avant-garde, decorative and applied art and scenography.The studio school that Alexandra Alexandrovna opened in Kyiv laid the foundations for new methods of teaching fine art. Ekster participated in most of the exhibitions held until 1925 in the capitals of Russia and Ukraine, exhibited her works in Germany, France and the USA.She was one of the first artists to receive lifetime recognition, as evidenced by numerous articles in periodicals of various countries, in particular, an illustrated monograph written in four languages by J. Tugendhold, a famous art critic and influential connoisseur of new French art (1922, Berlin).

A Russian avant-garde artist, graphic illustrator, an outstanding figure of theater and cinema and writer. The style of the creator in fine art was revealed in the harmonious combination of Modern, Cubism and Futurism with the techniques of traditional painting.Annenkov’s significant gallery of acutely characteristic portraits of painters and writers, politicians and artists was formed – in 1922, 80 paintings that convey the appearance of key figures of the time - Akhmatova and Meyerhold, Pasternak and Mayakovsky, Remizov and Gorky, Zamyatin and Khlebnikov, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Zinoviev and others – were included in the album “Portraits”. He was awarded the first prize for a portrait of Lenin in 1924 – it was printed on banknotes and stamps.It is impossible to overestimate his innovative contribution to the scenography of both Russian and French theaters. Working with Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Komissarzhevsky, Baliev, Annenkov first put forward and embodied the idea of pointless kinetically changing scenery. As a film artist, he was awarded the Oscar.Boris Temiryazev created dramatic and prosaic works, journalism and memoirs “Diary of my meetings” under a pseudonym. Having written vivid and not always complimentary memories of Blok, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Zamyatin, Akhmatova, Pasternak became an author who was forbidden to publish his works in the USSR.

A Russian artist, one of the "Amazons" of the avant-garde in Russia. Udaltsova devoted most of her career to easel painting; in the late period of her work, she was engaged in graphics. The artist was an active member and exhibitor of the “Jack of Diamonds”, “World of Art”, “Supremus”, “Moscow Painters”, and “13”.Having successively passed through the stages of Cubism, Cubo-futurism and Suprematism that logically followed Constructive art, the artist moved away from the avant-garde, since she preferred the aesthetics of figurative painting.As a teacher, she developed the innovative Object in Space course for free art workshops and the Institute of Art Culture, where she began working as an assistant to Malevich. The artist devoted more than ten years to teaching - before being accused of formalism and dismissed.The art of Udaltsova, an artist of the era, is distinguished by harmony, the integrity of compositions, and boldness of experiments. Her paintings, which have undeniable artistic and collection value, are in the largest museums in Russia and private collections.

An outstanding Ukrainian painter and graphic artist, one of the main representatives of the avant-garde fine art of the first half of the 20th century. He worked in the genres of landscape, portrait, still life and plot painting. David Shterenberg was a talented teacher; among his numerous students and followers, there were such prominent masters as A. A. Deineka and others. A multi-talented personality and creator, he was a book artist and a master of theatrical scenery.Being ahead of the development of new styles, the artist developed a theory of minimalism in a still life, where elements of Primitivism and Cubism harmoniously combined. He developed and published the program treatise "Tasks of Contemporary Art." He was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the USSR.The merit of the master in the world of art is that he defended the fundamental importance of easel painting in the general formation of a new aesthetics of the 20th century being in full solidarity with avant-garde art.

A Russian artist, an illegitimate son of famous landscape painter-wanderer Alexei Savrasov. Alexey Morgunov was at the center of the creative events and artistic ideas of the Russian avant-garde in the first two and a half decades of the 20th century, but subsequently completely abandoned it.The artist was an active member and exhibitor of the Moscow Association of Artists, Youth Union, Jack of Diamonds, became a participant in such landmark exhibitions as Tram V, Shop (Petrograd), Moscow Salon, and The World of Art, Fifth State Exhibition of Paintings in Moscow, etc.Morgunov was a close friend of Malevich. Together they invented different shocking events for Futurists. He was a regular at Kracht's salon of intellectuals; was fond of the theories of M. Larionov and N. Goncharova, working both in neo-primitivistic and cubo-futuristic manners. In terms of style of his early and late creative periods, he was the closest to French Fauvism.As a professor of painting, he taught at the State Free Workshops and was a member of the Objective Analysis group at the Institute of Artistic Culture. In the last decade of his creative career, moving away from the avant-garde, he created thematic paintings that are close to the style and meet the spirit of socialist realism.

An Italian painter, graphic artist, art theorist and critic. One of the first and most influential Futurists in the country. Gino Severini worked for a long time in the style of cubism, maintaining relations with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris.Under the influence of his teacher Giacomo Balla, the artist learned ways of expressing movement and speed in painting, which led him to Futurism. Together with several associates, he signed the first Futurism Manifesto in 1910.The artist’s works are distinguished by dynamism, mobility and swiftness. At the same time, an amazing balance of composition characteristic of Cubists defines Severini’s work. This feature allows you to partially resolve the contradictions between Futurism and Cubism, to combine their attempts to create what is impossible: to depict an object at the same time from several points of time, viewing angles and positions in space. In his work, the artist came to this goal as close as possible, managing to depict a really moving, sounding and lively picture. The artist is considered an unsurpassed master in depicting the bustling nightlife of the city.

A Ukrainian artist and poet, publisher, critic, who worked in Russia, Japan and America. One of the founders of the Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde traditionally referred to as the "father of Russian Futurism".He was an initiator of revolutionary ideas, which united many famous people (Lentulov and Exter, Bogomazov and Palmov, poets Mayakovsky and Kamensky, Kruchyonykh and Khlebnikov, Aseev and Guro), as well as the creator of the group "Gilea" - the first literary and artistic union of the Futurists. He was a member and organizer of innovative groups “Stefanos Wreath”, “Jack of Diamonds”, a member of the Moscow Youth Union and the Munich Blue Horseman.The master was the first in Bashkortostan to create images of the indigenous population, the first to transfer avant-garde to the land of Japan.The artist’s museum was created in Brooklyn (New York, the USA); the American International Zaumi Academy annually presents the prize “International Mark of D. Burliuk".

An Uzbek artist of Russian origin, one of the main founders of contemporary art in Central Asia, the organizer of several art associations of Uzbekistan, his motherland, where he worked fruitfully. The phenomenon of the Russian and Asian master lies in the fact that his best works are important not only for the formation of the Turkestan and Uzbek painting school but also for the history of art in general.The artist's legacy took a special place in the overall development of Central Asian art of the 20th century since it had its origins in the art of the East and the West. Volkov actively used traditional national motifs of arts and crafts and achieved monumentalism in creating images of ordinary workers, not losing touch with the cubist painting manner.Despite getting the title of People’s Artist in 1946, Alexander Volkov was accused of formalism in the same year; he was forbidden from exhibiting his paintings and teaching at the Tashkent Art College, where he had worked for almost 20 years.

The most famous Chilean artist, sculptor and architect, the leader of Latin American modernist art. Roberto Matta worked in the style of surrealism and was a close friend and associate of Salvador Dali, with whom they were united by the idea of ​​unconscious painting and a free flow of creativity without the intervention of intelligence or any system.The artist’s art is truly international. Born in Chile and living in almost all the capitals of Europe, as well as in the USA, Matta combined a wide variety of art styles in his work. He was never limited to one style, manner and materials, being an innovative artist, not tired of doing experiments. His unique style had a significant impact on the development of such a popular art movement as Abstract Expressionism.The most famous among the artist’s paintings are his surrealistic canvases from the Psychological Morphology series, which demonstrate an artificial reality filled with metaphors and symbolic figures. In the 1940s, Matta was distracted from studying subconscious and turning to social topics. In a series of works entitled Social Morphologies, he depicted complex mechanical objects and distorted human forms, symbolizing the injustices and horrors of the war.

A Belgian painter and draftsman, lithographer and illustrator.Frits van den Berghe was one of the most interesting Expressionist artists of the first half of the twentieth century and a prominent Surrealist. Starting his career under the influence of Symbolist artists and Lumists grouped in Laethem-Saint-Martin, he wrote a manifesto together with his friend, artist Gustave De Smet, who opposed Impressionism. As a member of the second wave of Laethem-Saint-Martin school, Berghe followed the latest trends in the visual arts of his country.The time of the First World War, a period of existential doubts when the artist lived in the Netherlands, was marked by his fascination with Cubist painting by French artist Henri Le Focognier, as well as an interest in Futurism and German Expressionism.At the end of the 1920s, having visited an exhibition, where, in particular, paintings of Ernst and Miro were exhibited, the artist moved away from other styles and devoted his art to attempts to overcome the barriers between real and irrational phenomena, life and death. Berge revealed his new surrealistic concept, in particular, in a theme that was original for this style - floral still lifes.Although Berghe's paintings often resemble works of Ernst and Ensor; his creations are the original Flemish version of Surrealism, with its great picturesqueness and expression. Berghe's works (the list of works, compiled in 1966, consists of 430 items) are presented in most Belgian museums and galleries in Europe.

A Ukrainian artist, major representative and one of the leading theorists of the Ukrainian art avant-garde of the early 20th century. Alexander Bogomazov is usually accompanied by the epithet “Ukrainian Picasso”, but he interpreted his work as cubofuturism in the article “Painting and Elements”, paying much attention to the rhythmic component of the work.Art critics characterize the world-class master as the most consistent of Cubo-Futurists, who most harmoniously combined the ideas of Italian Futurism with the stylistics of French Cubism and Orphism in his paintings. Moreover, it was he who theoretically substantiated the synthesis of these art movements. Bogomazov was a prominent cultural activist who reformed the country's system of art education. As a talented teacher, he taught for many years at various art schools, at the Institute of Plastic Arts (renamed in 1924 as the Kyiv Art Institute).The name of Alexander Bogomazov was removed from the history of art for more than 30 years due to the intensified struggle against formalism. People’s attention to his “arrested” paintings resumed only in the 1960s. The canvases of the outstanding avant-garde artist are exhibited at European and American galleries and museums.

A Romanian painter and sculptor of Jewish origin, the main representative of the vanguard of this country in the first half of the 20th century and during the post-war period. The artist made a significant part of his creative career in France. Although Victor Brauner, after his early post-impressionist and expressionist experiences, contributed to every avant-garde movement, much of his work fits into the concept of Surrealism.Active in the cultural life of his country, the artist tried to develop avant-garde movements - he founded the magazine “75 HP” in Bucharest, wrote the “Manifesto of Picto-Poetry,” and organized exhibitions of Dadaists and Surrealists. However, the threat of falling into the dungeons of the Nazis forced the artist to settle in France.Brauner was an active and influential member of the Surrealist association headed by Andre Breton; however, according to art expert, his art stood apart due to the artist’s unbridled imagination and, most importantly, his serious passion for esoteric ideas and the authentic art of different nationalities. This style made the artist original, especially after he lost his eye – the same one, which he depicted as knocked out in his self-portrait seven years before it happened in real.Victor Brauner was a participant in major surrealist exhibitions; in 1966 (in the year of his death), he was chosen to represent France at the Venice Biennale. He willed to make the inscription, "Painting is life, real life, my life" on the grave plate of the Montmartre cemetery.

James Rosenquist was an American artist, the central figure of pop art, famous for his huge collage paintings depicting popular objects of American culture. He was one of the first to include advertising images in his works. Consumer goods, well-known personalities and trademarks were permanent attributes of the artist's painting - he boldly combined all of them in his works of impressive size and bright colours.In his youth, James Rosenquist worked at an advertising agency and created the design of large billboards, which helped him develop his original style and recognizable style. For a modern viewer used to the fact that anything can be on the picture, it is not surprising that the canvas shows spaghetti in sauce or a bottle of Coca-Cola next to the portrait of the president. However, for the society of the 1960s, this was a real discovery and even a shock; therefore, the artist's works attracted the close attention of the public. One of them, called “F-111”, became truly iconic, “new Guernica”, which very accurately depicted American reality with growing consumer demand and frightening military power.The art of James Rosenquist was popular almost from the very beginning of his career. Using his influence, he stood up to protect his colleagues and helped achieve recognition of the rights of artists at the federal level, after which he was appointed to the National Council for the Arts of the United States. For six decades, Rosenquist created large-scale provocative paintings that rose economic, political, environmental and scientific problems, the relevance of which did not decline over time.

Arshile Gorky (his real name was Vostanik Manoug Adoian) was an American artist of Armenian descent, an outstanding artist of the USA of the twentieth century. He was a vivid representative of Surrealism and one of the founders of Abstract Expressionism, a movement that affirmed the independence and uniqueness of American fine art in the world.Vostanik Manoug Adoian decided to change his name after immigrating to the United States, where he began a completely new life, leaving behind extreme poverty and deprivation. The greatest shock for the artist was the demise of his mother, who died of hunger in his arms in 1919. The influence of this event is noticeable in many works of the artist, especially in the portraits of his mother, the variations of which he created throughout his career.The life of Arshile Gorky, which ended in suicide, was full of tragedy, and his personality is surrounded by a halo of mystery and secrets. The artist himself preferred to distort the facts of his biography, creating various myths about his origin, childhood and student years. These incredible inventions, however, could not overshadow his outstanding achievements in painting. The work of Arshile Gorky is a unique phenomenon that is difficult to characterize as a manifestation of one of the existing styles. It is a transitional stage between classical painting and avant-garde and had a significant impact on the development of modern painting in the United States.

An American artist and sculptor, a significant figure of modern painting and sculpture, one of the most commercially successful artists of the 20th century. Jasper Johns expressed the idea that art can be understood and close to each person, and not just for particular connoisseurs.Having abandoned the principles of Abstract Expressionism, misty and distant from people, he used generally known things, symbols of a certain phenomenon, ideas or just everyday habits in his paintings. His most famous picture of this style is “The American flag” – a recognizable and familiar to everyone national symbol, which the artist turned into a colourful painting.The name of Jasper Johns is often remembered together with another painter, his close friend and colleague Robert Rauschenberg. After Johns met him, his style significantly changed, and his ideas were realized in original and truly innovative works.The artist’s use of simple objects, for example, beer cans, which he made as a work of art, makes his work related to a conceptual approach to fine art. With his creations, the artist deliberately violated the boundaries between art and everyday life; this marked the beginning of the pop art movement that was extremely popular in the USA in the second half of the 20th century.The artist currently lives in Connecticut and is considered the most expensive of the living painters.

An innovative Czech artist, photographer, graphic artist and theater decorator, poet and art theorist, the brightest figure of European Surrealism of the 20th century. Jindrich Styrsky is also considered a representative of the Paris school of painting, since he lived and worked in France for a considerable time.The student of the Prague Academy of Arts was a part of Czech artistic bohemia and national avant-garde associations during its development between the two world wars - first in the Devestil group, then in the Manes group, and later in the surrealist community, one of the founders of which J. Styrsky became in 1934. In addition, the artist stood at the origins of the emergence of avant-garde photographic art and new scenography in Prague - he ran the Free Theater of the Czech capital.In the 1930s, Styrsky was the editor of the private magazine “The Erotic Revue” with illustrations from many famous Czech artists. The artist supplemented each issue with his collages. Among the most important surrealistic works is “Emily Comes to Me in a Dream”, which was published accompanied by erotic photomontages by the author and psychoanalytic interpretation of B. Brook. It greatly accelerated the overcoming of taboos and censorship of the bourgeois culture of that time.Jindrich Styrsky is a very peculiar, and, therefore, is not just a readable artist of Czech interwar art. His works are approved by modern European avant-garde classics and are presented in the most visited museums and galleries of the Czech Republic.

A Russian painter, sculptor, graphic artist and stage designer of Jewish origin, who combined the features of Russian Art Nouveau and avant-garde in his original work. One of the most famous and prominent Yiddish theater artists. Almost one decade spent in France did not make him a member of the Paris School of Art; accused of formalism, Robert Falk rarely exhibited his paintings in his motherland for the last twenty years of his creative career. However, he continued to create easel paintings “for himself”. He showed his works privately as a representative of unofficial art, the inspirer of which he became when he was young. He supported many young artists who visited his workshop.

An outstanding Hungarian painter and graphic artist, publicist and art theorist. Janos Kmetti was the first Cubist in his country and an influential teacher that educated a whole generation of young artists. Studying at the world-famous Julian Academy in Paris, he adopted the most advanced artistic traditions of Europe and enriched the art of Hungary with new avant-garde movements and painting methods. The career of the artist is tightly connected with the literary and artistic association Tett (Action), headed by Lajos Kassák. Together with a few associates, he was one of the founders of the New Society of Artists and its vice chairman in 1924. Kmetty also took an active part in the life of the art colony of Nagybánya and Szentendre and showed his works at collective exhibitions of Hungarian avant-garde artists both at home and abroad. In 1949, the artist was awarded the National Kossuth Prize - the honorary state award of Hungary; his autobiographical and theoretical works are important sources of information for art historians.

A Ukrainian artist of Jewish origin, who lived and worked in Russia for a long time. He was a portrait master, graphic illustrator, sculptor and theatre artist. The prominent avant-garde artist was a founding member of Russian cubism, a member of such significant creative groups as The World of Art and The Union of Youth, one of the founders of the Jewish Society for the Promotion of Arts. He was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Russia in 1968.

An outstanding Ukrainian artist Alexander Osmerkin was a member of the “Jack of Diamonds” art group, many other associations and groups, worked as a professor of painting at several higher art educational institutions and headed a personal workshop. In the 1940s, he came under the definition of “formalist” and “propagandist of Western art”, was dismissed from the Academy. He was forbidden to execute orders, exhibit and sell his works. Accepting the merits and talent of the master, the graduates of his workshop held the exhibition “In Memory of the Teacher”. An art and memorial museum was opened in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, the homeland of the artist, in the mansion where Osmerkin’s childhood passed; one prize is awarded in his name.

A Spanish artist, sculptor and poet, an outstanding figure of Spanish Surrealism, along with Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. Oscar Dominguez was an ambiguous and controversial artist whose life ended tragically. As a child, he had acromegaly, which resulted in deformation of the bones of his face and limbs. Oscar’s non-standard appearance caused profound spiritual experiences, which were reflected in many of his works, especially self-portraits.Paintings of the Spanish artist reflect the events of his life and are often provocatively shocking. They show everything that usually hides deep in the subconscious and is considered dirty and obscene. Dominguez often used the method of distorting objects and compared incompatible things, creating a strange and eerie atmosphere in his paintings.The artist is also known as the author of the popular decalcomania method that was popular among Surrealists. The essence of this technique is in the chaotic application of a thick layer of paint on the surface, followed by the imposition of a second sheet on it, resulting in a fancy imprint. With its unpredictable effects, decalcomania presented new ideas to artists and awakened their imagination. Andre Breton included this method in his famous "Surrealism Handbook", thus recognising the significant contribution of Dominguez in the common matter of the approval of this art movement.

A German representative of avant-garde, a prominent artist, sculptor, master of monumental painting, as well as a choreographer, theater designer and art theorist. For about 10 years he worked at the famous Bauhaus school of art and industry (Bauhaus, Weimar), developing the training course “Der Mensch” (Man), which was based on the synthesis of the techniques of several artistic disciplines and different styles. Oscar Schlemmer made a significant contribution to the art of scenography, creating design and choreography for several operas and ballets. The artist’s paintings were included in the list of “degenerative”; he was forbidden to paint and work as a teacher at art schools.

An English landscape painter (marina genre) and graphic artist Philip Wilson Steer was one of the leaders of English Impressionists and one of the founders of the New English Club of Artists (1886), which opposed the methods of the official Royal Academy of Art. Apart from working in the genre of marina, the main landscape genre, he created propaganda drawings and canvases during the First World War, when he worked at the British Ministry of Information. The artist was awarded the honorary title of the Knight of the British Order of Merit.

The American painter and graphic artist of Jewish origin and was born in Belarus. He created his works in various styles, such as realism (mystical and social), purism, cubism and surrealism.

A Russian painter and graphic artist, master of scenography, teacher, member of the art associations of the symbolists "Blue Rose", "Wreath", the group "Makovets". He was a member of the Union of Russian Artists. He was awarded the title of People's Artist of Russia, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Arts.

A Russian painter and graphic artist, book illustrator and film artist. Mikhail Tsybasov was among the followers of Pavel Filonov, who formed the core of the group “Masters of Analytical Art” and remained faithful to his teacher until the end, despite the persecution that he was subjected to by the Soviet government.In his work, the artist strictly followed the basic principles of the system of analytical art. Hardworking and purposeful Tsybasov did everything masterfully. His hard work and professionalism allowed him to master the “principle of accomplishment”, which was fundamental for representatives of analytical art.Mikhail Tsybasov actively participated in the collective work of Filonov’s students on the design of costumes and sets for the production of “The Inspector General”, thanks to which the group’s work became widely known. In 1931, he became one of the most prominent developers of illustrations of the Finnish ethnic epic “Kalevala”, investing a lot of strength and energy in this publication. Eight large illustrations for the poem became one of the best graphic works of the artist and in many respects formed his graphic style, determining the theme and manner of his subsequent work.In the last years of his life, the artist focused mainly on portraits, where he fully expressed his bright and positive attitude towards people and life.

A Ukrainian self-taught artist, one of the brightest original folk painters who worked in Ukraine and Moldova, a member of the Union of Ukrainian Folk Artists and the Moldavian Charitable Foundation of Ukrainian professional artists and folk masters Renastere-Renaissance. He was an author of more than 600 paintings exhibited at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Museum of Folk Art of Ukraine, the Museum of Popular Life and Architecture of Ukraine, etc. In the artist's house in Sokiryany, a museum was founded; one of the streets is named after Semernya.

A well-known Polish author of portraits and landscapes, a talented teacher, a participant in several art associations and exhibitions around the world. She was awarded many prestigious awards, including a gold medal at the international art exhibition in Munich (1905), the French Order of the Legion of Honor (1912), and a golden laurel wreath “For outstanding achievements in Polish art” (1936), Grand Prix at the Paris Expo (1939), the Order of the Renaissance of Poland (1938). Many of the portraits she created are considered real masterpieces.

A Russian artist and master of photography, a significant figure of the Russian avant-garde, the closest aide and follower of Kazimierz Malewicz during the heyday of Cubofuturism and the functioning of the officially unregistered community of avant-garde artists Supremus.Following the author of the famous "Black Square" reflected not only in the paintings of Mikhail Menkov, but also in his declarative statements, which he published in the form of leaflets before significant exhibitions of avant-garde artists. He was a participant in the “Jack of Diamonds” exhibitions and the first post-revolutionary large-scale exhibitions.Menkov gave examples of Russian-Ukrainian Cubofuturism and Suprematism, as well as colour painting in the visual arts. He left a not too extensive legacy in the form of paintings and theoretical works created during his short creative career due to his early death at the age of 40. Paintings that he sent from Yalta where he was receiving treatment were lost on the way to Moscow. Some works were destroyed in the 1930s as “formalistic”; only those “exiled” to regional museums were preserved. Besides that, the artist devoted much time to photography – thanks to that work, a number of avant-garde exhibitions were held in Moscow and Petrograd.Paintings of Menkov were presented at the exhibition «Auf der Suche nach 0,10 - die letzte futuristische Ausstellung der Malerei» held in Basil, Switzerland in 2015-2016 in honour of the anniversary of “The Last Futuristic Exhibition Zero-Ten” in Petrograd.

A Russian painter and graphic artist, one of the first students of Pavel Filonov and a talented follower of the method of analytical art. Pavel Kondratiev was a member of a circle of young artists, musicians and writers who collaborated with Isaiah Braudo, Maria Yudina, and Tatyana Glebova. He was a close friend of Alice Poret and for some time lived in her house, where a creative atmosphere reigned and meetings of people of art took place. The artist also became a regular character of several verses of famous poet Daniil Kharms and maintained friendly relations with him.The artist was famous not only for his numerous paintings and graphic works but also as an art theorist and a talented teacher. In the post-war period, a kind of “Kondratyev's circle” supporting his creative ideas formed around him. The painter collaborated with Vladimir Sterligov and together with him used the so-called "surplus element" in painting - a curved line that formed the basis of the famous "cup-dome" system.Kondratiev’s work is a kind of synthesis of several areas of the Russian avant-garde. He possessed a special talent to feel the pulse of his era and to combine seemingly incompatible styles and trends in his works. The works of Pavel Kondratiev are a unique fusion of scientific theories and the deep spirituality inherent in the real Artist.

A Russian painter and graphic artist of German-Jewish origin, master of the monumental genre (in particular, the mosaic), film artist, art theorist, talented art history teacher, poet and writer.Pavel Zaltsman can be hardly called a consistent successor of the ideas of analytical art, but as a student of P.N. Filonov he brought his ideas to the artistic environment of Kazakhstan, where he lived for more than 40 years and became an Honored Artist (1962).According to specialists, Zaltsman was a paradoxical figure: having no formal art education, he became one of the most profound and virtuosic masters of the 20th century. Repeatedly standing on the verge of death, he almost miraculously survived and again turned to creative activity. Not being an illustrator, but possessing a “literary” type of thinking, he left a legacy that is considered impeccable material for illustration.The phenomenon lies in the family education, inherited talents, and in communication with P. Filonov from the age of 17, who not only instilled taste in him and taught him to paint, but also taught to always be faithful to his vocation.Steadfastly enduring the difficulties of survival in conditions of extreme poverty, hunger, besieged life, lack of housing, chronic lack of money, despite the certain recognition in the 1970s, the artist remained a thinker and philosopher.Zaltsman's works are in the collections of the Russian Museum, his graphics are presented in the permanent exhibition of the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, the State Museum of Art of Kazakhstan, in many private collections.

A Russian artist and graphic artist, discoverer of new paths in the visual arts of the 20th century. He is considered the founder of mystical surrealism nine years earlier than paintings by Salvador Dali became known and the inventor of new anatomical (X-ray) painting, "new rayonism".Art critics note that Tchelitchew, who was a student of A. Exter in Kyiv and went to France early, influenced Picasso, including his «blue» and «pink» periods. Clowns, artists, and sometimes famous personalities look at the viewer from the canvases of that time. However, the artist did not create Cubist paintings after his earliest period. The Paris period includes his painting «Concert» that was sold at Christie’s auction in 2016 for almost $ 2 million and the price of which was much higher than the price of Dali's paintings exhibited there at the same time.By the 1950s, Tchelitchew's surrealism was somewhat overcome by Abstract Expressionism that entered the avant-garde art market. Nevertheless, even the artist’s last series of geometric abstractions have a mystical intensity that anticipates the psychedelic idealism of the 1960s. The “internal landscapes” of the master are recalled in the aesthetics of op-art.The talented and unique painter was appreciated by his famous contemporaries in Europe and the USA; it is hard to underestimate his influence on the development of art. At the same time, the artist's name was almost unknown in his motherland by the beginning of the 21st century. The Moscow gallery «Our Artists» organized his first solo exhibition in 2006; five years later, it presented more than 70 of his paintings and repeated his vernissage called «Tchelitchew. Encore Exhibition" in 2013.

A Russian artist, theorist of art, as well as a musician and composer, who wrote the futuristic opera «Victory Over the Sun». Mikhail Matyushin, as one of bright leaders of the the Russian avant-garde, actively developing in the first half of the 20th century, studied the interconnection between colors and shapes. His research and conclusions resulted in the unique handbook "Pattern of variability of color combinations", reprinted even today. The treatise was supplemented with tables, representing color harmonization for the first time in visual arts. It is based on the principle of coupling color, discovered by Matyushin and his associates.The artist, who was a close friend of futuristic groups, together with his wife, artist and poet E. Guro, organized the publishing house “Crane”, thanks to which books by Kruchenykh, Burliuk, Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky and others were published. The intensive research work of the author of the theory of “extended viewing” was inextricably connected with his teaching experience – M. Matyushin had many students and followers at his workshop of spatial realism, in the group "Zoreved" and later at the Petrograd department of organic culture of the State Art Institute.The Museum of the St. Petersburg avant-garde works in the house of Matyushin and Guro in St. Petersburg; it has a large permanent exposition, including works by Pavel Filonov, Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. Some paintings by Mikhail Matyushin are kept at the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Organic Culture, and at the Museum in Amsterdam.

Before taking up the visual arts at the age of 50, the Spanish self-taught artist, was an active member of the revolutionary movements. Thanks to Pablo Picasso, Pablo Neruda, Francois Mitterrand, David Rothschild, Greta Garbo and Helena Rubinstein acquired the artist’s works; several galleries in Europe organized his personal exhibitions. He participated in significant collective exhibitions in Basel and Rome, Rotterdam and Rabat, Zagreb and Belgrade. His paintings were bought not only by European museums (Paris, and others), but also by museums in the USA and Brazil. The artist is included in the United Art Rating “10,000 Greatest Artists of the World of the XVIII – XXI Centuries”.

A Swiss avant-garde artist, graphic designer and lithographer, master of book illustration and monumental painting, as well as a writer.Otto Tschumi organically perceived the canons of surrealistic manifestos requiring mental independence, as this was very consonant with his creative independence.The artist participated in numerous group exhibitions of this movement, including in America, but did not join any of the surrealist associations. Having developed his style, he perfected and modified it until the end of his long creative career of more than 60 years.His most significant work in book illustration was the drawings for Herman Melville's novel “Moby Dick” (the edition of 1942, Paris). As a sought-after monumentalist, Otto Tschumi painted several public buildings in Bern and other cities in Switzerland in the post-war period. The largest was the fresco for the office of Berne Customs (1955). As a writer, he received a state prize for the promotion of Berne literature in 1970.A museum was opened in the house of Otto and Beatrice Tschumi, where, in particular, the correspondence with Hans and Sophie Arp, Hermann Hesse, Max Bill, Meret Oppenheim, valuable for the history of European avant-garde art, is stored. The artist’s paintings are presented at all museums and art galleries in his country.The Surrealist artist, along with Alberto Giacometti, Serge Brignoni and Max Seligman, is considered one of the most important Surrealists of Europe that considerably influenced the fine art of their country in XX century.

A Greek artist, stage designer, illustrator and famous poet, whose works are translated into all European languages ​​and continuously reprinted. One of the leading and most consistent representatives of the Greek generation of the 30s, as well as a leading master of the surreal movement of his country.Growing up on the Plaka near the Acropolis, the artist lived in Constantinople and in Paris, where he became acquainted with works of art and literary traditions. He received education at the Athens Higher School of Fine Arts and later devoted a lot of effort working as a teacher at the famous Polytechnic Institute of Athens and restoration activities in the post-war period. Nicos Engonopoulos was rightly called the Master of Colors and Poems; in 1966, he was awarded the prestigious Order of George I for his achievements in the field of fine arts; in 1971, he was awarded the Order of the Phoenix for his literary works. He was twice awarded the First State Prize of Greece in the field of culture.Paintings of Engonopoulos, a prominent representative of early Surrealism, were shown at his numerous solo exhibitions; he participated in all significant Pan-Greek exhibitions, including architectural and theatrical ones. His works were demonstrated in New York and Rome, Venice and Vancouver, in Ottawa and other cities of the world.Special occupations of Nicos Engonopoulos during his whole creative career were designing books, painting churches, designing clothes and creating projects of decorations for theater productions of various cultural centers of the country.

An outstanding Latvian artist - painter and graphic artist, master of book illustration.After graduating from the graphic and painting department of the Latvian Academy of Arts, Maya Tabaka as an aspiring Soviet artist had a rare opportunity to have a two-year internship in West Germany. The time she spent among the artists of the Berlin New Fine Arts association allowed Tabaka's extraordinary talent to feel the "wind under the wings". German art experts continue to call the artist "a bird of paradise" till this day – the impression she made with spectacular plots and brilliant painting was great. German galleries hold portraits of Maija Tabaka by Dieter Masuhr and Wolf Vostell. The latter is often reproduced - this is a close-up of a face with spots of paint on it and a camera instead of a nose.The artist was also famous in her motherland – she became a member of the Union of Artists and People's Artist of the USSR, was awarded prizes and awards (medal "Three Stars", etc.), as well as the title of Honorary Citizen of Jurmala. Documentary films about the famous artist were also made. Paintings of Maija Tabaka are not only at the major museums, galleries and private collections of Latvia, but also at the State Tretyakov Gallery and in several collections of Germany. The artist keeps on participating in collective exhibitions. Her personal and retrospective exhibitions took place in many cities throughout Europe and in dozens of cities in America, enjoying success over more than half a century of her creative career.

A Czech artist, a painter, lithographer, graphic artist, book illustration master. Maria Cherminova, the brightest and most significant representative of poeticism and surrealism in the Czech Republic, took the pseudonym Toyen at an early age. Its origins can be interpreted as from the French “Citoyen” - a citizen, and from the Czech phrase, meaning, “this is he”. In both cases, the new name did not give her gender identity. Maria, who tried to break down stereotypes, became a cult figure both in the Czech Republic and in Paris, where she was supported, in particular, by Andre Breton, a leading figure of Surrealism.Toyen was an original and self-sufficient creator. She perceived Surrealism as a driving force of imagination, as well as of the social and political progress. The artist became one of the organisers of the Surrealistic community in Prague. Many of her paintings from the second half of the 1930s also had strong political and anti-war meaning.Hostile to bourgeois conformism, Toyen challenged values ​​based on totalitarianism. The artist left Prague after the Nazi occupation considering the communist regime imposed on the country unacceptable for the creator.In Paris, she participated in the activities of the surrealist group of A. Breton. Although the life and work of Toyen made a great contribution to the development of feminist art, she herself never entered into discussions, did not speak openly about feminism or about her sexual orientation. Nevertheless, experts consider her a pioneer of free female art.

Martin Jonaš was the most famous representative of the naïve art of Serbia, one of the founders of the Gallery of naive art in his homeland, in the village of Kovacice. During his long and fruitful creative career, the painter participated in more than 400 personal and collective exhibitions and actively popularized the naïve art of villagers. Martin Jonaš received many prestigious awards in Serbia and abroad. He received many art awards, including the gold medal at the Large International art exhibition in Italy in 1978, together with Salvador Dali. The artist’s painting is full of deep folk philosophy and respect for hard work of an ordinary villager.

An outstanding Spanish artist who worked in France for a long time and became a representative of the Paris school of painting. In contrast to her more famous Cubist compatriots Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, Maria Gutierrez Blanchard, during her lifetime, mostly influenced the artistic renewal of Spanish fine art in the early twentieth century, as she worked at home, participated in national shows and worked as a teacher. The artist is considered a key figure of the Spanish avant-garde; her paintings are a valuable part of the collections of national museums and expositions in Europe.

A German artist, designer, writer and theorist of art, a talented teacher who worked in America for a long time. The name of Josef Alberts is inextricably connected with the Bauhaus Higher Art School in Weimar, which was known for its avant-garde orientation. A former student of this institution, Albers worked there as a teacher, created a new art glass studio, and later became the deputy director of the school.In the USA, where the artist emigrated after the Bauhaus was disbanded by the Nazi authorities, he continued his teaching activities and played an important role in spreading the aesthetics of constructivism, cubism and abstract art among American artists. His work served as a kind of bridge between European avant-garde trends and the new modern art of America.Albers was best known for his series of works “Homage to the Square”, which includes geometric abstract paintings and lithographs that are distinguished by exceptionally subtle chromatic harmony. Almost all the paintings in the series consist of several squares that are inside each other and painted in muted harmonious colours. Creating his work, the artist carefully thought out every detail, the most delicate shades of colour and the effect of the use of certain combinations.In 1963, the artist developed the theory of colour pigments, which he outlined in his book “Interaction of Colour”.

An English artist and Surrealist writer with an interesting and difficult destiny, who lived in Mexico for around 70 years. The daughter of rich English noblemen, Leonora Carrington had obstinate character and desire for independence. She was excluded from several schools, until she started learning painting at a fine art school in Chelsea; at the age of 12, she met famous artist Max Ernst and ran away with him to Paris.During the war, the artist had to hide from Nazi authorities. She experienced imprisonment in a nuthouse and fantastic escape from it with the help of a nurse, who came by a submarine. Leonora Carrington got real happiness and confidence in the future only in Mexico, where she emigrated after marrying someone fictitiously.The artist was one of the brightest representatives of Surrealism. Her painting differs in a very personal, individual art language. It is filled with fantastic plots and symbolic figures, which derived from the Celtic and Central American Mythology, dreams and human subsonsciousness. Carrington’s mysterious world, perfectly combining with the special grotesque humor and courage of self-expression, reveals the unusual in simple things and is a true expression of the philosophy of Surrealism.

A Ukrainian self-taught artist, graphic artist, master of decorative painting. Basing on folk traditions, Hanna Sobachko-Shostak introduced modern sound and elements of fantasy into them. The artist became a Master of Folk Art (in 1936) and a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR in 1939. Her works were highly appreciated abroad, in particular, by Henri Matisse.

An eminent English artist and sculptor, a connoisseur and collector of works of art, a teacher and publicist. Roland Penrose was one of the key figures of British Surrealism, and also a founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, which was the center of the country's avant-garde culture. For a long time, the artist was a curator at the famous Tate Gallery and did a lot to acquaint compatriots with advanced art movements of Europe.The work of the British artist is mostly collages or paintings made in the collage style. In his works, the artist often used tourist postcards depicting famous places or architectural monuments, connecting them in various combinations, and creating his own original vision of world famous objects. The unexpected combination of incompatible things is the main idea of Penrose's art, which is reflected both in his canvases and in sculpture.The name of Roland Penrose is often mentioned in connection with his book "Picasso: Life and Work", which is one of the most reliable sources of information about the great artist, with whom the author had been friends for many years. Apart from this work, Penrose also issued monographs about his contemporaries, including Joan Miro, Antoni Tapies and Man Ray.

A painter, graphic artist, illustrator, theater designer and the creator of the school of primitive art in the village of Hlebine. Together with his associates, Krsto Hegedusic founded an independent artistic group called Earth in 1929. This group fought for social justice and equality in society, for which it was persecuted by the state. The artist often visited the village of Hlebine, where he spent his childhood; in 1930, he began to teach painting to talented local peasants Ivan Generalich and Franjo Mraz. This was the beginning of the famous Hlebine school of naive art, which glorified the work of Croatian primitive artists around the whole world.

A Swiss artist of Jewish descent, graphic artist and writer, as well as set designer and engraver, who lived and worked in the USA for a long time. Kurt Seligman is famous for his fantastic images of medieval troubadours and knights who carried out bright and sometimes terrible rituals and partly inspired the theme of carnivals held annually in his native Swiss Basel. The masterpiece of surrealistic engraving is a series of six etchings illustrating the Greek myth of Oedipus, published in 1944 and reprinted many times. His considerable work is also his book “The history of magic and occultism” (initially “Mirror Magic”, New York, 1948).

Mansiysk and the first Nenets artist. He is considered the creator of the "northern art". He became known thanks to his friend and biographer G. Gore. He is famous as a very sincere, gentle, naive artist, subtle colorist. During his short creative biography - only seven years, including four years of his student life at workshops specially created for folk amateur artists.

A Czech artist, graphic illustrator, stage designer and writer. Jan Zrzavy was one of the leading representatives of the 20th-century national art avant-garde, one of the founders of the creative association of artists “Sursum”, a member of the Czech Artists Association “Manes” and the Union of Graphic Artists “Gollar”. In 1937, the Nazis declared the master’s works “degenerative art”. In 1965, he was awarded the title People's Artist of Czechoslovakia. In the gallery of Jan Zrzavy in Telci, works that he bequeathed to his people are exhibited.

A Russian Jewish-born artist and designer, one of the closest students and followers of Kazimir Malevich, a bright and consistent supporter of the Suprematism of the younger generation. Developing the theoretical achievements of the author of the “Black Square” and not being distracted by other styles, Ilya Chashnik created large series of abstract geometric graphic works and paintings.The artist created dozens of different types of sketches for china. The simple Suprematist shapes of squares, triangles, rectangles when moving to the rounded surfaces of cups and dishes acquired a special expressiveness, new plastic beauty, which brought success to the Russian avant-garde porcelain in 1925 at the international Paris exhibition of decorative art. After that, Ilya Chashnik worked a lot on export orders; the objects made from his drawings constitute collections of the corresponding period at the State Hermitage Museum and at the State Museum of the Porcelain Factory of St. Petersburg.At the end of his very short (the artist died of peritonitis at the age of 27) creative career, Chashnik experimented in architecture, creating ascetic and laconic "architects" - the practical application of these experiments was work on decorating the city buildings of Petrograd.The artist's works are in demand: they are in many European collections; the absolute record was set by his early work “The Seventh Dimension, Suprematical Relief”, sold at Sotheby's auction house for $ 3 million in 2016.

A Polish artist and teacher, one of the brightest and most emotional representatives of Slavic Symbolism and one of the founders of Art Nouveau in his country. In Poland, the Museum of Contemporary Art named after Jacek Malczewski, the branch of which is located in Radom, the hometown of the artist, has been opened.

An American artist and a surrealist poet who lived and worked for a long time in Europe - Italy and France. Her creative career as an artist lasted about 30 years, starting from her first exhibition in 1936. As a representative of the "golden era of Surrealism" - its active post-war period - she was known and widely recognized for her original artworks, usually containing architectural themes.When Katherine Linn Sage was married the first time, she was a rich Italian princess and generously helped other artists. Throughout her career, she mostly worked under the shadow of her second husband, Surrealist Yves Tanguy, who today remains more famous in the art world than Sage. However, Katherine's creations were also popular, especially after the artist's full biography was published in 1997.In modern art criticism, Sage and Tanguy are considered to be a closed system - a chain of influence of two creators on each other, which was confirmed by the exhibition “Double Solitaire: Surrealistic Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy”, held at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College in 2012.Kay Sage is known mainly as a visual artist, but she also wrote five volumes of poetry, mainly in French, and four plays. The autobiography "Chinese Eggs" was not published during her life.The style of Sage is similar to Veristic Surrealism, in which illusory images of incredible places inspired by a dream and imagination are presented; her art is mentioned among works of such authors as Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Paul Devo and Yves Tanguy.