The avant-garde and the School of Paris
Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealism were born in Paris, and the city drew artists from all over the world.
At the Salon d'Automne of 1905 Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck hung paintings in wild, pure colours. A critic called them fauves – wild beasts. Two years later Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and together with Georges Braque he created Cubism, which broke objects up into planes and viewpoints. These were the most radical changes to painting since the Renaissance. Paris became a meeting place for artists from Spain, Russia, Italy, Romania and the Nordic countries.
The artists lived in studio buildings in Montmartre and later in Montparnasse. Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Constantin Brâncuși and Chaïm Soutine were among those usually counted as part of the School of Paris. The First World War shattered the community of the first generation. After the war came Dada and then Surrealism, which under the leadership of the poet André Breton sought the images of dreams and the unconscious. At the same time Art Deco and Le Corbusier created a new, modern world of form.
In the 1930s art became increasingly political. Picasso painted Guernica in Paris in 1937 as a protest against the bombing of a Basque town. When Germany occupied France in 1940, many artists fled, especially Jews and others facing persecution. The Nazis looted Jewish art collections, and some artists were deported and murdered. Others stayed and worked quietly. When Paris was liberated in 1944 the city was still the capital of art, but its position would soon be challenged by New York.