Art Movements and Styles Master List

 

ART MOVEMENT OR STYLE	FAMOUS EXAMPLES	WHAT MAKES THE STYLE
Prehistoric / Cave Art	Lascaux Caves Altamira Caves Cueva de las Manos	STYLE: Simplified designs in natural colors (red, brown, black) CONTENT: Animals and images of daily life
Roman/Byzantine Mosaics	Roman Medusa mosaic Byzantine Bird and Flowers mosaic Hagia Sophia mosaics	STYLE: Pictures made of small pieces of stone or glass called “tesserae” CONTENT: Animals, religion, daily life
Islamic Art	Ottoman tughras Yaqut al-Musta'simi Jame Mosque tiles	STYLE: Extremely detailed, floral motifs CONTENT: Decorative, non-living designs
Haida Art – Formline design	Bill Reid Daxhiigang (Charles Edenshaw) Freda Diesing	STYLE: Smooth, curving black and red lines that change thickness. Often symmetrical. CONTENT: Animals and legends
High Renaissance & Rococo	RENAISSANCE: Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo Raphael Titian ROCOCO: François Boucher Jean-Honore Fragonard Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun	STYLE: Renaissance art is very realistic and artists spent a lot of time studying how to draw people.  Rococo art is also realistic, but usually has lighter, softer colors. CONTENT: Renaissance art typically includes portraits, people, and religious scenes (Greek Myths & the Bible).  Rococo art includes light-hearted scenes of romance, nature, and aristocrats (the wealthy).
Ukiyo-e	Utagawa Hiroshige Katsushika Hokusai Hishiki Moronobu	STYLE: Woodcut prints – smooth, flat colors with no shading. CONTENT: Images of nature and daily life, as well as festivities like theater
Impressionism / Post-Impressionism	IMPRESSIONIST: Claude Monet Pierre-Auguste Renoir Édouard Manet Mary Cassatt POST-IMPRESSIONIST: Paul Gauguin Paul Cézanne Vincent van Gogh	STYLE: Focused on capturing a scene at a specific point in time with an emphasis on light CONTENT: Landscapes, portraits
Pointillism	Georges Seurat Paul Signac Henri-Edmond Cross	STYLE: Painted entirely in small dots without mixing colors. For example – instead of making a light yellow-orange color, the artist would put dots of white, yellow, and orange very close together. CONTENT: Landscapes, sometimes including people
Art Nouveau	Alphonse Mucha Gustav Klimt Aubrey Beardsley	STYLE: Smooth, curving, decorative lines. Lots of white, brown, tan, and gold colors. CONTENT: Women with flowing hair, animals, flowers
Fauvism	Albert Marquet André Derain Maurice de Vlaminck	STYLE: Bold, unnatural colors with visible brush streaks CONTENT: Landscapes, portraits
Cubism	Pablo Picasso Georges Braque	STYLE: Instead of looking at an object and drawing it just from that ‘point of view,’ Cubists would draw different sections of the picture from all different angles. The end result looks mixed-up and ‘broken’ into pieces. CONTENT: People, still life objects, landscapes
Expressionism	Edvard Munch Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Marianne von Werefkin Franz Marc	STYLE: Emotion over reality. These artists would exaggerate face expressions and use colors to represent feelings. CONTENT: Portraits, people, scenes from life
Dada	Jean Arp Marcel Duchamp Hannah Höch	STYLE: Often called “anti-art,” Dada was a reaction to the first World War, when artist felt like the world was in chaos. Dada art is purposefully bizarre, nonsensical, or chaotic, CONTENT: Collages, found objects, parodies, and photos
Surrealism	Max Ernst Rene Magritte Salvador Dalí Frida Kahlo	STYLE: Strange, dream-like scenes with realistically drawn objects in odd places. CONTENT: Strange, dream-like pictures that combine objects in unusual ways
Pop Art	Andy Warhol Robert Rauschenberg Roy Lichtenstein	STYLE: Bright and flat colors, bold outlines – like a comic book. CONTENT: Scenes from pop culture such as celebrities, famous brand logos, and comic book panels.
Minimalism	Sol LeWitt Ellsworth Kelly Frank Stella	STYLE: Extreme form of abstract art, simplified down to just basic shapes and colors CONTENT: Geometric shapes
Anime/Manga	Osamu Tezuka (often called the “Father of Manga”) Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon)	STYLE: Not technically a single style or art movement, but included because it’s a big influence on many contemporary artists. Typically has solid black outlines and “cel shading” CONTENT: Stories (Narrative Art)