All art movements.

Every movement on the site, grouped by era and ordered by when it began.

Renaissance

6

1290–1400

Proto-Renaissance

Where Byzantine gold gave way to human weight

1400–1490

Early Renaissance

Perspective, proportion, and the rebirth of antiquity

1430–1580

Northern Renaissance

Obsessive detail and hidden meaning in oil and light

1450–1600

Venetian School

Color and light triumph over Florentine line

1490–1527

High Renaissance

A brief, perfect balance of harmony and grandeur

1520–1600

Mannerism

Elegant distortion after the Renaissance's perfect balance

Baroque & Rococo

3

1600–1750

Baroque

Theatrical light and motion serving power and faith

1600–1680

Dutch Golden Age

Everyday Dutch life painted with uncanny quiet precision

1720–1780

Rococo

Pastel frivolity, flirtation, and aristocratic pleasure in paint

The Long 19th Century

29

1600–1900

Ukiyo-e

Woodblock visions of Edo's fleeting floating world

1760–1830

Neoclassicism

Cool restraint, civic virtue, and ancient Rome revived

1800–1850

Romanticism

Emotion, nature, and the sublime over cool reason

1809–1850

Nazarene Movement

German painter-monks reviving medieval Christian sincerity in Rome

1825–1875

Hudson River School

America's wilderness painted as sacred, sunlit destiny

1830–1870

Barbizon School

Painters who took their easels into the actual forest

1830–1900

Orientalism

Europe's exotic, dream-lit vision of the Islamic East

1840–1900

Academic Art

The official taste of the 19th-century Salon system

1840–1880

Realism

Ordinary life painted without flattery or myth

1848–1890

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

English painters longing for art before Raphael's polish

1850–1875

Luminism

Hushed light and glassy stillness on the American coast

1855–1880

Macchiaioli

Italian painters who built pictures from patches of light

1860–1900

Aesthetic Movement

Beauty pursued for its own sake, no moral required

1860–1910

Arts and Crafts Movement

Handmade beauty raised against the machine

1860–1890

Impressionism

Light, broken into a thousand strokes

1860–1900

Japonisme

Europe's infatuation with Japanese design and image

1870–1900

Peredvizhniki

Russian realists who carried art to the people

1870–1915

Tonalism

Twilight, dissolved into a single hue

1880–1920

American Impressionism

French light, painted on American ground

1880–1910

Symbolism

Dreams, myth, and mood over observed reality

1884–1905

Neo-Impressionism

Color built from thousands of tiny dots

1885–1895

Cloisonnism

Bold outlines caging flat pools of color

1885–1960

Naïve Art

Self-taught vision rendered with wonder and precision

1885–1910

Post-Impressionism

Color and brushwork pushed past fleeting appearances

1886–1900

Heidelberg School

Sunburnt light on the Australian bush

1888–1900

Les Nabis

Prophets of flat pattern and intimate scenes

1888–1900

Synthetism

Memory and emotion synthesized into painted form

1890–1910

Art Nouveau

Nature's curling lines transformed into total design

1897–1920

Vienna Secession

Vienna's rebel artists forge a golden new style

Early Modernism

30

1900–1915

Ashcan School

New York's grit and gaslight, painted unflinchingly

1904–1910

Fauvism

Wild, unmixed color unleashed from nature's true hues

1905–1913

Die Brücke

Young Dresden radicals bridge craft and raw feeling

1905–1930

Expressionism

Raw inner feeling distorting color, line, and form

1907–1925

Cubism

Shattering single-point perspective into faceted planes

1909–1930

Futurism

Speed, machines, and violence rendered in motion

1911–1914

Der Blaue Reiter

Animals, color, and the spiritual pull of abstraction

AI

1911–1920

Metaphysical Painting

Empty piazzas haunted by impossible shadows

1912–1920

Orphism

Pure color spun into rhythmic, abstract circles

1912–1920

Rayonism

Reality dissolved into intersecting beams of light

1912–1925

Synchromism

Color harmonies orchestrated like musical chords

1914–1918

Vorticism

London's machine-age answer to Cubism and Futurism

1915–1930

Constructivism

Art rebuilt as engineering for a new society

1915–1942

Shin-hanga

Ukiyo-e's afterglow, painted with Western light

1915–1925

Suprematism

Pure feeling reduced to floating geometric forms

1916–1924

Dada

Deliberate nonsense as protest against a mad world

1917–1931

De Stijl

Grids of primary color seeking universal harmony

1918–1937

Harlem Renaissance

Black creative genius claims the modern spotlight

AI

1918–1926

Purism

Machine-age clarity distilled from Cubist clutter

1919–1933

Bauhaus

Where art, craft, and industry became one

1920–1939

Art Deco

Sleek geometry dressed in luxury and speed

1920–1933

Group of Seven

Canada's wilderness, painted bold and unpeopled

AI

1920–1950

Mexican Muralism

Revolution and history painted large for the public

1920–1933

New Objectivity

A cold, unsparing mirror held to Weimar Germany

1920–1940

Precisionism

American industry rendered as crisp, clean geometry

1924–1966

Surrealism

Dreams, desire, and the unconscious made visible

1925–1945

American Regionalism

The rural Midwest painted with pride and plainness

1925–1960

Magic Realism

The uncanny hidden inside photographic precision

1929–1950

Social Realism

Art bearing witness to poverty and injustice

1932–1980

Socialist Realism

Heroic labor glorified as official state doctrine

Postwar

22

AI

1943–1965

Abstract Expressionism

Raw emotion, unleashed across the whole canvas

AI

1945–1960

Action Painting

The canvas as an arena for the body

1945–1975

Art Brut

Raw art made outside every rule of taste

1945–1960

Tachisme

Spontaneous stains and gestures of raw instinct

AI

1947–1970

Color Field Painting

Vast, glowing color meant to be entered

AI

1948–1951

CoBrA

Untamed color and folk myth rising from ruins

AI

1952–1965

Neo-Dada

Found objects meet paint in irreverent collage

1954–1972

Gutai

Painting reinvented as raw physical action

1955–1975

Kinetic Art

Sculpture set loose to move and shift

1955–1975

Pop Art

Advertising's bright surface turned into fine art

1959–1970

Hard-Edge Painting

Flat color blocks cut by razor-sharp painted edges

AI

1960–1975

Minimalism

Industrial forms stripped to pure geometry and material

AI

1960–1970

Nouveau Réalisme

Real objects, torn posters, and industrial debris as art

1960–1970

Op Art

Geometric patterns that trick the eye into motion

1960–now

Performance Art

The artist's own body as the artwork

1961–1978

Fluxus

Everyday actions scored, boxed, and mailed as art

1963–now

Video Art

Television turned into a medium for art

AI

1965–1980

Conceptual Art

The idea itself becomes the artwork's true material

AI

1966–1980

Post-Minimalism

Soft materials, chance, and process replace industrial rigor

AI

1967–1980

Arte Povera

Humble materials turned into radical sculpture

1967–1980

Land Art

Sculpture carved directly into the earth

1968–1985

Photorealism

Paintings so precise they mimic the camera

Contemporary

17

1965–1985

Feminist Art Movement

Women artists reclaiming the body, craft, and voice

1970–now

Graffiti Art

Names and letters claiming the city in spray paint

AI

1975–1985

Pattern and Decoration

Ornament restored to fine art, unapologetically

1978–1990

Neo-Expressionism

Raw, monumental painting returns to feeling

AI

1979–now

Lowbrow & Pop Surrealism

Underground comix craft meets surreal pop imagery

AI

1979–1990

Transavanguardia

Italy's exuberant, myth-soaked return to painting

1980–1990

Neo-Geo

Cool geometry recast as consumer-culture critique

1980–now

Street Art

Public walls turned into a global open gallery

1988–2000

Young British Artists

Shock tactics reinvent 1990s British contemporary art

AI

1990–now

Bio Art

Living tissue, genes, and organisms as art

1990–now

New Media Art

Art built from screens, circuits, and code

AI

1995–2010

Relational Aesthetics

Art staged as encounter, meal, and conversation

AI

1995–now

Superflat

Anime-flat surfaces collapsing high and low art

1999–now

Stuckism

Figurative painters revolting against conceptual art's grip

AI

2008–now

Post-Internet Art

Art made with the internet as a given condition

2015–now

AI Art

Images generated through trained artificial neural networks

2017–now

Crypto Art

Digital art authenticated and sold on the blockchain