The avant-garde

In twelve years artists broke virtually every rule that had held since the Renaissance.

In 1905 the Fauves, the “wild beasts,” led by Matisse, shocked Paris with colors that did not describe reality. That same year Die Brücke was founded in Dresden, and Expressionism spread through Germany with strong colors and angular forms.

Picasso and Braque broke objects apart in Cubism and showed them from several sides at once. The Futurists in Italy celebrated speed and machines. Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian went all the way to abstraction – but Hilma af Klint had already been painting abstract pictures since 1906.

The First World War led young artists in Zurich to found Dada, a protest against all reason. Duchamp’s readymades asked what art really is. After the avant-garde, art could be anything.