Art History: Major Movements, Techniques, and Artists

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering art history movements, historical dates, key techniques, and defining concepts from Classical Antiquity through Contemporary Art.

Classical Antiquity

An era centered on Greece and Rome (8th c. BCE–5th c. CE) whose art and architecture emphasized symmetry, balance, realism, naturalism, and idealized beauty.

Contrapposto

A sculptural pose developed in classical antiquity involving the twisting of the body's vertical axis so that the hips, shoulders, and head turn in different directions.

Hellenistic Art

A period of Greek art spanning from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE) to the death of Cleopatra VII (30 CE), distinguished from earlier Classical art by greater movement and emotion.

Byzantine Art

A medieval artistic style marking a shift from Classical naturalism to a spiritual, symbolic aesthetic characterized as formal, flat, frontal, and floating.

The Renaissance

A cultural period spanning the 14th to 17th centuries meaning 'rebirth,' marked by renewed interest in Classical antiquity, ordered architecture, and realistic pictorial representation.

Sfumato

A painting technique demonstrating a mastery of tonal values and soft, smoky blending between colors and outlines, famously implemented by Leonardo da Vinci in the Mona Lisa.

One-Point Perspective

A mathematical system of spatial illusion used by Renaissance painters, such as Raphael in The School of Athens, to create depth converging at a single vanishing point.

French Renaissance

A 15th- to early 17th-century revival in France that centered on the rebirth of Europe as a whole and did not strictly adhere to the symmetry and balance of Greco-Roman architecture.

Mannerism

A style emerging around 1520 in the late Italian High Renaissance where artists intentionally elongated the human form to render figures 'unnaturally elegant.'

Baroque

A 17th- to 18th-century European style characterized by intense drama, dynamic movement, grand scale, deep emotion, bright colors, and ornate decoration.

Chiaroscuro

The dramatic balance and strong contrast between light and dark in painting, mastered during the Baroque period by Caravaggio.

Rococo

An exceptionally ornate 18th-century movement (1699–1780), also called Late Baroque, noted for pastel colors, asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, and theatrical trompe-l'œil frescoes.

Neoclassicism

An 1800s movement that revived ancient Greek and Roman styles, characterized by order, restraint, rationality, clear forms, and cerebral history painting that rejected Rococo frivolity.

Romanticism

A 19th-century artistic and intellectual movement that reacted against rationalism by emphasizing intense emotion, individualism, and the glorification of nature and the past.

Hudson River School

A 19th-century American landscape movement centered on realistic detail, panoramic vistas, dramatic lighting, and the glorification of the American wilderness and the West.

Realism

A movement originating in France in the 1840s (spanning 1848–1900) and cited as the first modern art movement, committed to depicting everyday life with detailed, life-like accuracy.

Impressionism

A painting movement (1865–1885) dedicated to capturing the fleeting optical impression of a specific moment using short, rapid brushstrokes, sketch-like finishes, and modern life subjects.

Post-Impressionism

A period from 1885 to 1910 where artists worked independently to explore abstract forms, subjective visions, and personal, symbolic meanings rather than mere observations of the external world.

Pointillism

A Post-Impressionist painting technique developed by Georges Seurat that constructs an image out of tiny, distinct dots of pure color.

Art Nouveau

An international style (1890–1910) translating to 'New Art,' defined by organic motifs, long flowing natural curves, sinuous lines, and widespread application to graphic arts and illustration.

Art Deco

A decorative and architectural style originating in France in the 1910s and flourishing in the 1920s–early 1930s, regarded as the first truly international style and known for polished, stylized geometric design.

Cubism

An avant-garde movement (1907–1914) founded by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque that abandoned copying nature to present fragmented subjects across flat, two-dimensional surfaces with multiple viewpoints.

Fauvism

The first 20th-century avant-garde movement (1900–1935), led by Henri Matisse and characterized by bold surface design, flat composition, and the separation of intense color from representational purpose.

Dada

An anti-art movement formed in Zurich during World War I that responded to the horrors and folly of the war through nonsensical, satirical artworks, poetry, collages, and performance.

Surrealism

An art movement (1916–1950) emerging from Dada that defied rationalism and tapped into the unconscious mind, influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories and Karl Marx.

Abstract Expressionism

A post-WWII movement (1940s–1950s) centered in New York, also called action painting or the New York School, that broke conventional rules using spontaneity, improvisation, and monumental canvases.

Drip Painting

An action-painting technique popularized by Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, in which paint is dripped, splattered, and poured directly onto unmounted canvases laid on the floor.

Pop Art

A movement of the 1950s–1960s that challenged Abstract Expressionism by incorporating mundane consumer goods, mass media, and celebrity imagery, asserting that art has no cultural hierarchy.

Mid-century Modern

A design movement spanning from the mid-1940s to the late 1970s celebrated for clean lines, functional practicality, and minimal ornamentation.

Conceptual Art

An art movement of the 1960s–1970s rooted in Marcel Duchamp's readymades where the underlying idea or concept is primary, taking precedence over the aesthetic or material object.

Contemporary Art

An umbrella term denoting art produced from 1970 to the present day by artists who are still living and working, comprising numerous diverse schools and innovative media.

Installation Art

A contemporary spatial practice that blurs media boundaries (such as sculpture, sound, video, and architecture) to transform a site and challenge the division between digital and physical space.

Performance Art

An ephemeral contemporary medium in which actions executed by the artist—often exploring body endurance, feminist themes, and audience interaction—form the work itself.

Digital Art

An artistic practice blending creative expression and technology using media such as computers, audio-visual software, sound files, and pixels.