Surrealism

It was an artistic movement that brought together artists, thinkers and researchers in hunt of sense of expression of the unconscious. They were searching for the definition of new aesthetic, new humankind and a new social order. Surrealists had their forerunners in Italian Metaphysical Painters (Giorgio de Chirico) in early 1910's. 
   As the artistic movement, Surrealism came into being after the French poet Andre Breton 1924 published the first Manifeste du surrealisme. In this book Breton suggested that rational thought was repressive to the powers of creativity and imagination and thus inimical to artistic expression. An admirer of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the subconscious, Breton felt that contact with this hidden part of the mind could produce poetic truth. 
    Famous Surrealist artists include Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, MC Escher, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, and Man Ray.

Salvador Dali

Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931).

In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.

Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films---Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930)---and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.

Pittura Metafisica

Pittura Metafisica (Ital. for "metaphysic painting") denotes a style that came up in Italy as early as in 1911/12, lasting up into the 1920s. The term originates from the main master and founding father of Pittura Metafisica, Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). Artists such as Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) and Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) followed his example around 1917/18. 
A fundamental feature of the Pittura Metafisica, in its literal sense, is the depiction of the object's "super-natural" features (Greek "metá" = beyond; "phýsis" = nature), the object's content beyond its visible features. These ideas had clearly been influenced by Giorgio de Chirico's younger brother Andrea, who was working as a writer and painter under the pseudonym Alberto Savinio. Philosophical concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer also occupied fundamental roles in this context.
The painters of the Pittura Metafisica created coulisse-like and perspectively exaggerated views that seemed like dreams filled with over-sharply modeled figures and objects, which have been taken from their original contexts and rearranged in new and strange relations. Man is also treated as an object - as "manichino", a faceless jointed doll, or as a construct of stereometric basic forms. Isolation, alienation, inexplicability and mysteriousness coin the atmosphere of the calm, motionless Pittura Metafisica that wanted to be less a way of painting than a means of observing. 
In their concept of materiality, but also in terms of style, the artists of the Pittura Metafisica referred to the solemn and strict austerity of the Early Renaissance (Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello). The simultaneosuly upcoming dynamic Futurism can be perceived as a counter movement to the Pittura Metafisica - Carlo Carrà, up until 1915 one of the leading artists of Futurism, explained his turn to the Pittura Metafisica with the rediscovery of the "principio italiano", which was prevailing in Renaissance.
The Pittura Metafisica had effects beyond the borders of Italy, especially on New Oobjectivity and Surrealism, which both came up up a little later.

DADA

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I, and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many thought had brought war about. Influenced by ideas and innovations from several early avant-gardes - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement is believed to have dissipated with the arrival of Surrealist in France.
Key Ideas

Dada was born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI.

The movement came into being at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916. The Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose playCandide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of Zurich Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times."

So intent were members of Dada on opposing all the norms of bourgeois culture that the group was barely in favor of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried.

Dada art varies so widely that it is hard to speak of a coherent style. It was powerfully influenced by Futurist and Expressionist concerns with technological advancement, yet artists like Hans Arp also introduced a preoccupation with chance and other painterly conventions.


Richard Hulsenberg
Born on 23 April 1892 in Frankenau, Hessen, Germany, died 1974. Late in his life he lived in New York under the name of Charles R. Hulbeck and practised Jungian psycho-analysis. Took a prominent part in the foundation of the Zürich and Berlin dada movements. He had been an expressionist poet and writer. Came to Zürich in February 1916 as a ware-resistor and immediately came into contact with the "Cabaret Voltaire." He returned to Berlin in January, 1917, initiating the Dada group there. Hugo Ball wrote of him, in his "Escape from Time," on 11 February 1916:

"Huelsenbeck has arrived. He pleads for an intensification of rhythm (Negro rhythm). He would best love to drum literature and to perdition."

Edited the "Dada Almanach" in Berlin in 1920 and wrote "En Avant Dada," a history of dadaism. in the same year. The author of numerous other dada publications. He claimed throughout his life that "dada is still existing," thus placing himself in direct opposition to the other founders of dadaism.

Synchromism

Synchromism, often wrongly spelt as Synchronism, was an American art movement founded in the year 1912-13. Co-founded by Abstractionists Morgan Russell (1886-1953) and Stanton MacDonald-Wright, this purely abstract style was the first to bring America on the international stage of Fine Arts. It is easy to draw a parallel between Synchromism and its Contemporary Art form Orphism, which was essentially a trend or specialization in the Cubist Art that placed a premium on the understanding and the use of colors. Orphism was considered the crucial piece leading to the evolution of Abstract Art from Cubism. The body of works in Orphism was related to the Greek God Orpheus, who represented music, fine arts, and the musical instrument lyre. Synchromism never restricted itself to a particular subject or a group of subjects. Nevertheless, in techniques and forms it remained similar to Orphism

The underlying philosophy of Synchromism is to identify and recreate the colors symmetry, which is considered a similar phenomenon as the harmonization of musical symphonies. The co-founders argued that juxtaposed or lyrically arranged, colors are capable of conveying the message just as the finely orchestrated musical notes. Therefore, the 'early' paintings in Synchromism tend to reduce the use of blended shades, flowing tones, and hues. However, as the trend moved towards complexity in the later stages, such elements began forming a part of Synchromism.S

Section D'or

Paris-based association of Cubist painters; the group was active from 1912 to about 1914.

The group’s name was suggested by the painter Jacques Villon, who had developed an interest in the significance of mathematical proportions such as the ancient concept of the golden section, thesection d’or. The name thus reflects the Cubist artists’ concern with geometric forms, although Villon and Juan Gris were the only Cubists who directly applied such concepts to their work. The principal members of the group were Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Roger de La Fresnaye, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Louis Marcoussis, Jean Metzinger, Francis Picabia, and André Dunoyer de Segonzac.

In 1912 the group first exhibited together at the Galerie la Boétie in Paris, and it also published a short-lived magazine entitled Section d’Or. The start of World War I in 1914 ended the activities of the group, which had never been more than a loose association.

A French term meaning 'golden section', this refers to an irrational proportion known since the time of EUCLID (c.3rd century BC) and once thought to possess a hidden harmonic proportion in tune with the universe.

It may be defined as a line divided in such a way that the smaller part is to the larger as the larger is to the whole.

ROBERT DELUNAY
French painter Robert Delaunay was one of the first artists to introduce vibrant color into Cubism, trend eventually known as Orphism. An important figure in 20th century art, Delaunay is often overshadowed by his contemporaries such as Picasso, Matisse and Barque. Delaunay and his wife, Sonia Terk Delaunay, worked on a large, impressive abstract mural together for the Paris Exposition in 1937.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter
The Der Blaue Reiter movement was a German expressionist art period lasting from 1911 to 1914. The name Der Blaue Reiter was taken from one of Kandinsky’s works, Le Cavalier bleu. The movement was led by Kadinsky, Klee, Marc, and Macke – a group of expressionist artists greatly influenced by the Brucke artists of the previous decade – the Der Blaue Reiter did not believe in the main objective of the Brucke movement (simply focusing on one group of artists). The Der Blaue Reiter artists attempted to find spiritual truths that they felt impressionists had not conveyed. The art movement was not stylistically unified as demonstrated by the range of pure abstractions created by Kadinsky versus the romantic images of Marc. The Der Blaue Reiter believed in changeability, new ideas, and the mixing of different ideas of spirituality and art.
Wassily Kandinsky  1866-1944

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. One of famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. 
Kandinsky's purely abstract works followed a long period of development based on his personal artistic experiences. Fascination and unusual stimulation by color in his childhood, than his study of the folk art in the region, in particular the use of bright colors on a dark background; he used later in his paintings and reflected in much his early work.
For the most part, Kandinsky's paintings did not emphasize any human figures. There are some exceptions: "Sunday, Old Russia (1904)" and "Riding Couple (1907)". Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Perhaps the most important of Kandinsky's paintings from the decade of the 1900s was "The Blue Rider (1903)". The type of intentional disjunction applied in this painting, allows viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork would become an increasingly conscious technique used by the artist in subsequent years-culminating in his great "abstract expressionist" works of the 1911-1914. In The Blue Rider Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colors than of specific details. 

Futurism

    FUTURISM

   Futurism came into being with the appearance of a manifesto published by the poet Filippo Marinetti on the front page of the February 20, 1909, issue of Le Figaro. It was the very first manifesto of this kind. The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than hypocritically enjoying the modern world's comforts while loudly denouncing the forces that made them possible. Fearing and attacking technology has become almost second nature to many people today; the Futurist manifestos show us an alternative philosophy.

   Futurism was inspired by the development of Cubism and went beyond its techniques. The Futurist painters made the rhythm of their repetitions of lines. Inspired by some photographic experiments, they were breaking motion into small sequences, and using the wide range of angles within a given time-frame all aimed to incorporate the dimension of time within the picture. Brilliant colors and flowing brush strokes also additionally were creating the illusion of movement. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism. 
   Although Futurism itself is now regarded as extinct, having died out during the 1920s, powerful echoes of Marinetti's thought, still remain in modern, popular culture and art. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism. 

    Main represantatives of Futurism are;Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severi
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