During the early twentieth century, many new accomplishments and changes were happening in the United States. Accomplishments such as the first plane being built by the wright brothers in 1903, to the first man walking on the moon in 1969. The art world also had many new accomplishments and changes, as new styles were being incorporated with old styles. During the early twentieth century the spanish artist Pablo Picasso, and the french artist Henri Matisse dominated the arts department. Picasso and Matisse had many similarities and differences in their works of art.
Picasso often shifted from one style to another, and even worked on more than one mode at the same time. Matisse on the other hand started and ended his career as a colorist, with important changes throughout his life. Directly after the post Impressionist era a new style of painting was being established. This type of art was called fauvism, in which Henri Matisse was the main founder. The most important formal element to fauvist painters was the treatment of colors. They incorporated bright vivid colors that contrasted each other with crude and gerish brush strokes to create an unusual color combination.
This is evident in Henri Matisse’s “woman with the hat. ” In this painting the women is covered with blocks of color and crude brush strokes, there are also no clear outlines and arbitrary colors throughout the entire painting. This was a perfect example of what the fauvist painters were trying to accomplish. Fauvism however was short lived and in came a new style of painting called Expressionism. Expressionism was a formed group that outlasted the fauves in France. Expressionist shared similar interest in color with the fauvist as they used color to create mood and emotion.
They however differed from each other as the expressionist had a greater concern for the emotional and spiritual properties of color and form. As expressionism evolved painters started grouping themselves into different groups such as the Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke. The Die Brucke (the bridge) was founded by a group of four German artist whose main intentions were to create a bridge between their own art and modern revolutionary ideas. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was the most important artist of the bridge. He was inspired by African and Oceanic art and integrated their ideas with the mechanical forms of the city.
On the contrary Der Blaue Reiter (the blue rider) was a german expressionist group that were more drawn to figurative abstractions. Vassily Kandinsky was the founder. Of the blue riders and his works of art were accomplished by painting color patterns that brought people to a more spiritual place. Kandinsky was also the first artist ever to paint non figurative art that had no absolutely no true meaning. In conclusion although the fauvist and expressionist era were short lived, they laid the foundations of the twentieth century abstraction.
Matisse continued to create art and started fading more towards abstract form. This is evident in “dance 1” as the figures in the painting seem distorted, and all though the background is flat in color, he managed to create a three dimensional effect. Matisse continued to follow this art form until the final decade of his life, were he gave up painting due to cancer. He then turned to creating three dimensional illusions from absolutely flat forms, and were called cutouts. This inspired many innovators of the twentieth century art.
