EUROPÄISCHE UND INTERNATIONALE KÜNSTLERLINNEN UND KÜNSTLER 
  EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS  
KÜNSTLERGRUPPE    @rtist-group 
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STYLES  OF  PAINTINGS

Action Painting

Jackson Pollack developed Action Painting going from Abstract Expressionism
to the automatic transfer of the Unconscious on canvas, which ensued out of
Surrealism. Action Painting was then taken up by others as well. The
painting process became the most important part, it became a ritual.
Dripping ("to drip or trickle," a technique, with which Max Ernst
experimented with already in the 20s and 40s), and "dripping" was the
technique of often taking an unprepared and mostly large canvas which was
carried out by dripping paint out of perforated cans in an impulsive manner,
or the canvas was simply splashed with paint. Under  the omission of
rational control rhythmic patterns and lines were created, which were
supposed to express energies of the internal being.

Dadaism

International art movement, named after the French word "Dada" for
"hobbyhorse." It was obligatory for all artists NOT to settle on a
particular style: "Dada had the programme, not to have one. . .' (H.
Richter), but a political anti-bourgeoisie attitude and the liberation of
hidden creative forces which were blocked by norms of culture. The movement
originated in 1916 with the "Cabaret Voltaire" in Zurich. The Dadaists
strive for overthrowing of cubism and futurism with the help of an ironic
synthesis of the primitive-banal movement and most advanced techniques.
Noise-music, simultaneous poems, provocative collages and assemblage made
out of the most banal industry objects belonged to their means of
expression.
Foundation members of the movement, who swiftly founded branches in Paris,
New York, Cologne, Hanover and Berlin and elsewhere, were Hans Arp, Tristan
Tzara, Hugo Ball and Richard Huelsenbeck;
supporters or at times representatives were, for example, Marcel Duchamp,
Man Ray, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia and George Grosz. The
nihilistic tendencies of Dadaism however, soon to progress into the
"Constructive", amongst other things into surrealism and recently into
Pop-art.

Expressionism

European art form from approximately 1905-25, in which Germany had been
decisively involved. Forerunner were painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul
Gauguin and Edvard Munch. In 1911 the concept of "Expressionism" appears and
was soon applied by the representatives of fauvism, "The Blue Rider" (Der
Blaue Reiter), "The Bridge" and "The Storm".
All these directions of style had mutual features: the personal values of
feeling dominate the stark colours, expressiveness of the lines and powerful
contours as well as an abstract simplification of the objective to the
striking pictures and of large size and a tendency to the deformed and
contorted perspectives.
The beginnings of Expressionism in Germany are initiated with the foundation
of "The Bridge" (Die Brücke) in 1905 and "The Blue Rider" (Der Blaue Reiter)
in 1911. Loners like Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde, Paula Modersohn-Becker,
Christian Rohlfs, Ludwig Meidner and others joined. In France George Rouault
with his religiously oriented pictures represented an artistically
exceptional position. The so-called "Rhineland Expressionists" took in a
middle position between fauvism and the "Blue Rider", e.g. Jan
Thorn-Prikker, Heinrich Nauen, Heinrich Campendonk. Charles Hofer, Max
Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz and Oskar Kokoschka can be categorised as
"The Storm" since around 1912.
After the First World War the Jewish artists of the Ecole de Paris formed
their own version of Expressionism; to the "Flemish Expressionism" belong
amongst others Constant Permeke, Gustave de Smet and Albert Servaes.
Expressionistic tendencies went into the "Muralismo", Abstract
Expressionism, into the "Informel", in "Art Brut" and the "Group Cobra".

HISTORICAL-PAINTINGS 

is a category into the painting, the historical events, but also fabulous and poetic topics to the picture-object have. HISTORICAL-PAINTINGS into the widest senses has given to each time it. Into the difference to the actual picture of the story it arrives not always on historic fidelity, but it became the illustrations and interpretations through the respective artists or also the sponsors. Interesting at this establishment is, that itself at this principle until today through all art-epoch’s and directions nothing has changed. Up to the eighteens Century calculated also one the religious and mythological depictions to the HISTORICAL-PAINTINGS and for Leon Battista Alberti, Italian humanist, artists and scholars (Genua of 14.2.1403 until Rome of 25.4.1472) were valid for example painters of countryside-pictures as a type minder category. For the French academy was > le génie d'historiere< the identification of the artists as such. Hans Terwege

Informel

In 1950 Michel Tapies labelled "Informel" as a form of non-geometrical,
abstract painting which articulates itself in the spontaneous act of
painting without norms of composition. The art form  of "Informel" (in
existence since approximately 1945/ 46) coincides in time and formally with
"Abstract Expressionism" and "Action Painting" as well as with "Lyrical
Abstraction" and "Tachism". Prominent representatives of this art form were
Wols, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages and Sam Francis.

Cubism

Cubism emerged as an artistic trend at about 1907 in  Paris which was based
on the principles of form by Cézannes. The founders were Picasso, Gris,
Braque, Leger and Derain. In the first phase, in the so-called "Analytic
Cubism", the object was by means of reduction of the colour shades decreased
to its stereo-metric basic forms. The splitting into angular facets served
the simultaneous depiction of different views of the object as well as
(among other things) through elimination of the central perspective its
constructive connection into the disposition of space. This principle could
serve as a model for the cubist simplified Negro figure, as for example in
the work of early Cubism, Picasso's work "LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON", 1907
(New York, Museum of Modern Art).
The most important medium of Cubism was the collage, which swiftly turned
into one of the most influential trends of the modern art. Synthetic Cubism
developed, mainly  inspired through Juan Gris, approximately from 1915
onwards. He attempted to unite different materials and levels in a
"synthetic" manner to a new picture where a decorative arabesque served as
the connection.

Pop Art

A trend which developed in the 50s of the 20th Century in England and the
USA, then also on the continent, and which wanted to obliterate the
border-line between art and everyday reality. The banal environment of the
modern consumption orientated society, its subculture and mass media were
explained to be worthy of depicting, but at the same time scrutinised in a
critical and ironic manner. One of the first of the major works of Pop Art
is Richard Hamilton's collage "Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So
Different, So Appealing?", 1956 (Thousand Oaks, California, Collection E.
Janss). It already includes almost all the  elements of the Pop iconography:
the muscle man, the Pin-Up-Girl, electric appliances, a tin can as well as
references to the mass media. Sex and advertisements and their combination
to the 'turning a human being into an object' up unto his degradation to the
object of desire and to commodities dominate the theme of many artists, a
typical example is Tom Wesselmanns' work. Andy Warhol turns his attention to
the bold and striking aspect and the reproduction of modern everyday life;
Roy Lichtenstein updates this with monumental enlargements of cartoons the
formation of "more modern" views.

Surrealism

One of the most important trends of the modern art which dedicates itself to
the description of the irrational and dreamlike qualities of the depths of
the Unconscious. In 1924 the first surrealist manifesto was published in
Paris which claimed that the contradictions of dream and reality, of
unreality and reality, should be dissolved in an absolute "super-reality",
which was helped by Automatism and the mystification of the Absurd. The
magic meeting of the world of the object and in an absurd ambience, a
curious Animism and the tendency to alienation became the basic elements of
the Surrealist art form, which also provoked the findings of Psychoanalysis.
This style was on the one hand applied in an abstract vocabulary (Hans Arp,
Joan Miró and  Max  Ernst), and on the other hand in Surrealism, which was
operated with frosty attention to detail (Salvador Dali). Surrealism turned
quickly into an international movement.
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