Art nouveau

The century opens with Art Nouveau, which on the wave of renewal spreads across the Western world with the aim of bringing a sense of beauty to every object of daily life.

Art Nouveau is distinguished in various countries, taking on typical characteristics and thus being classified with different names: Horta Style, Liberty, Modernism, Jugendstil, Secessions, Modern Style. From the modernist currents comes Art Deco, which will continue for the first decade of the century. Many aspects of these currents will be proposed again and can be traced throughout the evolution of the twentieth century.

The Historical Avant-gardes of the 20th century

Around 1905, at the first inklings of the crisis that would soon upset Europe, the so-called historical avant-gardes were born, which developed into various movements that can be grouped into two waves, one until the First World War and one until the Second World War. World Cup the next.

What the Avant-gardes have in common is the radical change in artistic language, profoundly receptive and aimed at transmitting a powerful expressive charge, thanks also to the free experimentation of new pictorial techniques and new representation tools.

This artistic revolution will bring to light the complexity of reality, highlighting the ambiguity of human perception and proposing new interpretations and keys to understanding the world.

Innovation and art of the 20th century

The art of the twentieth century is also a mirror of the cultural innovation of the era; Surrealism, for example, is directly influenced by nascent psychology and therefore by Freud’s writings, even if it finds precedents in the work of Klimt and Symbolism.

Even the cubist visions, the pointillists with their in-depth study of light, as well as the dynamic painting of futurism and abstractionism owe much to the scientific ferment of the time.

In fact, we find names such as Albert Einstein, Maxwell, Max Planck Heisenmberg, who with their research open a window onto new perspectives, questioning and updating the scientific laws valid up until that moment. Alongside this, philosophy also finds new lifeblood with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Henri Bergson, George Simmel, all sharing the definition of intuition and impetus as the driving force of life and creative action and placing in the foreground the relativity of existence.

Thanks to all these new interpretations, the Artist of the 20th century first of all questions himself and his own interiority, and then the world around him, where physical laws are called into question by new scientific discoveries.

To frame these profound innovations, we find the two World Wars, which will bring a further sense of uncertainty together with the decadence of ideologies; with the Second World War, and therefore with the advent of the atomic age, even the idea of ​​progress was called into question in the face of such a sad outcome of science. These characteristics will translate into the art of the 20th century with often tragic tones.

French and German expressionism

At the beginning of the century, in France, there was a lively air of progress and innovation. The population is pouring from the countryside into the cities and the excitement is tangible.

In the artistic field, in the year 1905 in Paris a group of young painters exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, causing great scandal and dismay among the public and also receiving total contempt from art critics. Such artists are derogatorily defined as Fauves, beasts.

As often happens when one is faced with a new, radical artistic idea, the expressiveness of these young people was not understood; the Fauves propose particularly lively, almost violent, often unnatural color combinations which however have the ability to express the painter’s emotions through the painting. The shapes are simplified, the limits defined by a clear contour line, the colors flattened; the paintings appear rather simple, as if drawn by a child.

These works do not address social or political dynamics, rather they reflect the liveliness, the joy of living that can be felt at the beginning of the century, when the devastations of the First World War are still far away.

Among the main exponents of this artistic movement we find Henri Matisse (1869-1954), André Derain (1880-1954) and Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958).

Meanwhile, a group of young painters, united by the desire to express themselves freely and denounce the hypocrisies of society, met in Dresden, Germany, in 1905.

Theirs is a restless, very busy art, founded on the use of unnatural colors and the rendering of twisted shapes and hard lines. What the French expressionists have in common is the absence of perspective, the abandonment of aesthetic canons such as the correct rendering of volumes and chiaroscuro.

With similar techniques we therefore find two contrasting results, on the one hand the sparkling optimism of France, on the other the social denunciation of German artists.

Cubism

Around 1906, the artistic meeting of two of the most famous and important painters in the history of art took place: the Frenchman Georges Braque (1882-1963) and the Spanish Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Influenced in their research, among others, by Paul Cézanne and by the art and sculpture of some tribal populations of the “Dark Continent”, these two artists developed a totally innovative artistic expressiveness. From Africa, for example, Picasso studies the masks carved in wood by tribesmen, which transmit to him new ideas and interpretations of space and forms.

And so, from the experiments of these two artists, Cubism was born, which goes beyond perceived forms, transforming and abstracting reality in a process of representation starting from the perception that our mind has of reality itself.

The artistic movement of Cubism is divided into three precise historical periods.

1907-1909: objects and figures are simplified and reduced to geometric shapes; the artists propose a multiple vision of reality, that is, taken from various points of view simultaneously imprinted on the canvas. For example, in some of his works Picasso draws two eyes even in a face taken in profile.

1909-1911: in this phase there is a further distortion of reality. Objects and space are in fact reduced to geometric solids which are then broken down and placed on the canvases without an apparent logical composition. The importance of color is secondary to that of shapes. This phase is known as Analytical Cubism.

In 1911 the so-called Synthetic Cubism began. After having undergone the analysis and decomposition of the previous phase, the object is synthetically recomposed to seek not so much its original form but its essence; color summarizes its importance.

Futurism

Futurism is one of the most important and innovative Italian artistic movements of the first half of the 20th century. Born first and foremost as a movement of thought and literature, it subsequently spread to other forms of art, including painting, of course. The ideas underlying this current were published and summarized by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti when he published the famous Futurist Manifesto in various national newspapers in 1909.

Futurists fundamentally exalt progress, industry and new technological discoveries, through the rendering of the sense of dynamism and speed that permeates the new daily reality, expressing strength and action, but also the violence and oppression of war. In the wake of the literary movement, some artists of the time published a Manifesto in 1910, where the key points of their vision of futurist painting were listed.

The basis of their works are dynamism, speed and movement. By abolishing the traditional rules of perspective, painters promote a representation of the movement of the object by lengthening and distorting the lines as if they were an extension in space and time of the object itself.

Among the most representative artists of the Futurist Movement we find Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) and Gino Severini (1883-1966), Iras Baldessari (1894-1965).

Dadaism

Dadaism in art is an artistic movement that was established for the first time in Switzerland in Zurich around the years 1914-1916. Initially born as a trend or fashion, but also as a form of protest and rebellion against the degradation of war, over time it also influenced the visual arts, theatre, graphics, literature and poetry.

Artists belonging to Dadaism break the conventions of official art, creating an artistic form that is actually anti-art. Contrary to aesthetics, to conventional techniques, to the idea of ​​representing any form of ideal through their works, but indeed inclined towards extreme rebellion in their message, the Dadaists play with their creativity using techniques such as photography, Frottage and collage, but also non-traditional tools such as the airbrush, or transforming everyday objects into real works of art (technique known as ready-made).

Abstractionism

Developed in Germany, France, Russia and Italy between 1909 and 1912, Abstractionism excludes figurative art in favor of the expression of one’s feelings through the use of only shapes, lines and colors.

In various countries it takes on different connotations; in France, directly descending from Cubism, the artist Robert Delaunay created the so-called Orphic Cubism. In Russia, Kazimir Malęvič developed Suprematism in 1915, which combined pure geometric elements, simplification of figurative elements, thus seeking the “Supreme” essence of vision.

Perhaps the most important current, however, is the German one, as it will directly influence modern art throughout the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1912, Vasily Kandinsky, founder of the expressionist movement Der Blaue Reiter, created watercolors which he himself defined as “abstract”. Another protagonist of German abstract art is Paul Klee.

In Holland, a few years later, a new trend called Neoplasticism was born, when Piet Mondrian founded the magazine De Stijl.

Metaphysics

At the same time as the development of Futurism, in 1909, thanks to Giorgio De Chirico, a new artistic trend was born in Italy, Metaphysics, which was fundamental for the subsequent birth of Surrealism.

Compared to futurism, based on dynamism and speed, metaphysics is stasis, immobility. However, the pictorial techniques, as well as the precepts of perspective, are traditional ones.

Observing a metaphysical painting, we find ourselves faced with an apparently normal scene which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be unnatural, almost frozen in a timeless instant, with lights and perspectives that create in us a sensation of extreme immobility and silence.

Metaphysics was officially declared as such only in 1917 after the meeting between De Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Savinio, Filippo De Pisis, Mario Sironi and Felice Casorati also joined the movement.

A few years later, in 1921, the Metaphysics group dissolved. Many artists approach the Valori Plastici movement.

Surrealism

Surrealism is an artistic movement that was born around 1920 and managed to involve painters, intellectuals, people linked to cinema, literature and poetry, spreading throughout Europe and beyond. In 1924 André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in Paris in which we find traces of the first definition of the new Movement:

“Pure psychic automatism, through which one aims to express the real functioning of thought with words, writing or in another way. Command of thought in the absence of any control exercised by reason beyond any aesthetic and moral concern.”

Surrealism is the process in which the unconscious, which normally emerges in dreams, also manifests itself during waking hours, allowing words, thoughts and images to be freely associated, without inhibitory brakes or particular purposes.

Surreal, “beyond” reality (sur-reality), a state in which waking and dreaming are both present and reconciled.

Surrealist painting presents two different tendencies.

The first, Verista surrealist painting, includes artists such as Salvador Dalì (1904-1989) and René Magritte (1898-1967). Surrealist paintings represent objects from the real world placed in unusual contexts, painting ambiguous situations that lead the observer to be confused as he tries to read the work with normal criteria.

The second trend, non-figurative surrealist painting, goes beyond the representation of external reality to favor exclusively the internal one. Juan Mirò (1893–1983) and Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) are among the main exponents of this trend, and play in their paintings with invented objects, shapes, lines and colors combined in unusual ways.

Magical Realism

Magical Realism combines two tendencies, one realistic and one magical. The paintings resulting from this artistic trend describe a precise realism, however wrapped in a still, almost magical atmosphere, capable of generating amazement.

Magical Realism is reunited, in technique and subjects, with the classics of the Italian fifteenth century, therefore with painters such as Masaccio, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, although it is inevitably influenced by the different artistic trends of the period, such as the suspended time of metaphysical origin and the primitivism of form.

The various artists protagonists of this movement provide different interpretations of it; they have in common the transfiguration of reality, which remains the starting point, through imagination and amazement that reveal the mystery behind the represented world.

To describe the painting technique Bontempelli should be mentioned:

“Realistic precision of contours, solidity of material well placed on the ground; and around like an atmosphere of magic that makes us feel, through an intense restlessness, almost another dimension into which our life is projected”.

Before him, Franz Roh had spoken of Magical Realism, in 1923, referring to what would soon be identified as the New German Objectivity.

Italian exponents

The three main exponents of this season of Italian painting are Felice Casorati, Antonio Donghi and Cagnaccio di San Pietro.

Felice Casorati (1883-1963), with the poetics of objects and the value of form, is considered one of the main artists of Magical Realism. He, in contrast to the general tendency of his contemporaries’ painting aimed at seeking expression through color and sign, highlights the importance of shape, planes, volumes, which he enhances with a non-realistic use of colour, obtaining what he himself defines as the architecture of the painting. Behind this apparently static approach, in reality lies the sweet search for beauty which is hidden for example in “ecstatic and still souls, immobile and silent things, long gazes, deep and clear thoughts”.

Antonio Donghi and Cagnaccio di San Pietro represent the most orthodox wing of Magical Realism.

Antonio Donghi (1897-1963), Roman, although following the artistic developments of the period, always remained on the outside, showing little interest.

His is a painting with flat and vivid colours, with static, immobile contexts, characteristics which he came to accentuate in the 1930s with the use of enamelled and brilliant colours.

Cagnaccio di San Pietro (Natalino Bentivoglio Scarpa, 1897-1946) is the artist who shares the intense, almost merciless light and frozen atmospheres with the New German Objectivity. The hyper-realistic description of details is evident in the way he crudely describes every fold of the flesh.