Skip to content
Whitebank Fine Art

Art movements

A timeline of art movements, from the Renaissance and the Baroque to Impressionism in the 1870s and the figurative painters of today.

Each movement has its own page: what it was, when and where it happened, how to recognise it, the works that define it, and the artists who belonged to it, every one linked to a page in our A to Z with what a valuation of their work turns on.

Two more areas have pages of their own: street art and African artists.

Free valuationRequest a call

Art movements timeline

  1. Botticelli's The Birth of Venus: the goddess stands on a scallop shell at the edge of the sea, blown ashore by two winds on the left, while a nymph on the right holds out a flowered cloak.
    About 1400 to 1600RenaissanceLeonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian in Italy, and Van Eyck, Dürer and Holbein in the north, revive the art of antiquity and paint the world as the eye sees it.Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo
  2. Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew: a beam of light falls across a dark room onto men counting money at a table as Christ, on the right, points towards Matthew.
    About 1600 to 1750BaroqueCaravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velázquez bring drama, deep shadow and movement to the art of the seventeenth century.Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi
  3. Fragonard's The Swing: a young woman in a billowing pink dress kicks off her shoe as she swings high in a leafy garden, watched by a young man hidden in the bushes below.
    About 1715 to the 1770sRococoWatteau, Boucher, Fragonard and Tiepolo trade grandeur for pleasure, in pastel colour, curling ornament and scenes of love.Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard
  4. Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog: a man in a dark coat, seen from behind, stands on a rocky summit looking out over a sea of fog and distant peaks.
    About 1790 to 1850RomanticismTurner, Constable, Friedrich, Delacroix and Goya put feeling, nature and the individual imagination before the rules of the Academy.J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, William Blake
  5. Monet's Impression, Sunrise, 1872: the harbour at Le Havre in blue morning haze, with an orange sun and its reflection above small rowing boats.
    1860s to 1886ImpressionismMonet, Renoir, Degas and their circle paint modern life and changing light in quick, broken strokes of colour.Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas
  6. Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889: a swirling night sky of stars and a crescent moon over a sleeping village, with a dark cypress rising on the left.
    1886 to about 1905Post-ImpressionismCézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat push Impressionist colour towards structure, emotion and symbol.Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin
  7. Rousseau's Surprised!: a tiger crouching in dense jungle grass, lit by lightning, as rain lashes the trees and leaves.
    1880s to the presentNaive artSelf-taught painters, from Henri Rousseau to Alfred Wallis and Beryl Cook, paint with a directness the academies trained out.Henri Rousseau
  8. Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte: Parisians strolling and resting on a riverbank island in the Seine, painted in small touches of colour.
    1884 to about 1905PointillismSeurat and Signac paint in dots of pure colour that the eye mixes, a method known at the time as Neo-Impressionism.Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce
  9. Toorop's The Three Brides: three veiled brides surrounded by swirling lines and rows of bell-shaped figures.
    about 1886 to 1910SymbolismPainters turn from the visible world to dream, myth, desire and mortality, from Paris and Brussels to Oslo and Vienna.Jan Toorop, Edvard Munch, Paul Gauguin
  10. Mucha's The Seasons: four tall panels of young women among flowers and leaves, labelled Été, Printemps, Automne and Hiver, under ornate gold arches.
    About 1890 to 1910Art NouveauMucha, Klimt, Horta and Tiffany turn the curving lines of plants into a style for posters, buildings, glass and jewellery.Gustav Klimt, Jan Toorop
  11. Delaunay's Red Tower: the Eiffel Tower in red, broken into fragments among tilting grey Paris buildings and white clouds.
    1860s to about 1970ModernismThe century-long break with tradition, from Manet and Cézanne through Cubism and abstraction to the 1960s.Édouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso
  12. Matisse's Woman with a Hat, 1905: his wife Amélie in a huge hat, her face and dress painted in patches of green, violet, orange and blue.
    1905 to 1908FauvismMatisse and Derain paint in pure, unnatural colour and are called 'wild beasts' at the Salon d'Automne.Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck
  13. Kirchner's Street, Berlin: two women in feathered hats and fur-trimmed coats walk among dark-suited men on a pink pavement.
    1905 to the 1920sExpressionismDie Brücke in Dresden and Der Blaue Reiter in Munich distort form and colour to express emotion.Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
  14. Vanessa Bell as a young woman, in a dark wide-brimmed hat and a lace collar, looking to one side, in a black-and-white photograph.
    1905 to the 1930sBloomsbury GroupVanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry bring Post-Impressionism to London and paint everything from canvases to furniture.Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant
  15. Gris's Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan: a table of bottle, fruit bowl and newspaper broken into Cubist planes, opening onto a blue square outside.
    1907 to the 1920sCubismPicasso and Braque break objects into planes and show them from several viewpoints at once.Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris
  16. Boccioni's The City Rises: a huge red horse and straining workers dissolve into swirling strokes of red, blue and orange in front of a city building site.
    1909 to about 1916, and afterFuturismMarinetti, Boccioni, Balla and Severini celebrate speed, machines and the modern city, and break form into motion.Gino Severini
  17. Kandinsky's Composition VII: a dense whirl of black lines and patches of red, blue, yellow and green across a large canvas.
    1910s to the presentAbstract artKandinsky, Kupka, Malevich and Mondrian give up the visible world for colour, line and form, and the century follows.Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay
  18. A group photograph of the Paris Dada circle in 1921, men in suits and one woman crowded together and smiling, Tristan Tzara with a monocle in the front row.
    1916 to about 1924DadaArtists in revolt against the First World War use chance, collage and the readymade to mock art itself.Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Man Ray
  19. Mondrian's Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow: a large red square at top right, a small blue square at bottom left and a yellow block at bottom right, divided by thick black lines on white.
    1917 to about 1931De StijlMondrian, Van Doesburg and Rietveld reduce painting and design to straight lines, right angles and primary colours.Piet Mondrian
  20. The Bauhaus building in Dessau: a grey block with a wall of glass and the word BAUHAUS running down its corner in white letters, under a blue sky.
    1919 to 1933BauhausWalter Gropius's school in Weimar and Dessau unites art, craft and industrial design.Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger
  21. The steel crown of the Chrysler Building in New York: tiers of sunburst arches with triangular windows rising to a needle spire against a blue sky.
    1920s and 1930sArt DecoGeometry, speed and luxury: the style of the 1925 Paris exhibition, from Lempicka's portraits to New York's skyscrapers.Tamara de Lempicka, Erté, Sonia Delaunay
  22. Salvador Dalí in profile, hair slicked back, against a patterned backdrop.
    1924 to the 1960sSurrealismAndré Breton's movement of dream and the unconscious, from Dalí and Magritte to Ernst, Miró and Carrington.Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst
  23. Barbara Hepworth's bronze Spring, an oval form pierced through the middle, on a plinth among the plants and trees of her garden in St Ives.
    1928 to the 1960sSt Ives SchoolBen Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, then Lanyon, Heron, Frost and Hilton, make a Cornish town a centre of abstract art.Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Christopher Wood
  24. Jackson Pollock sitting on the running board of an old car, looking down.
    1940s to 1950sAbstract ExpressionismPollock, de Kooning and Rothko make New York the centre of the art world with huge, gestural or colour-filled canvases.Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline
  25. Georges Mathieu, with a long waxed moustache and a large checked coat over his suit, seated at a café table in 1961.
    1945 to the 1960sArt InformelEurope's answer to Abstract Expressionism: gestural, textured abstraction in Paris, with Tachisme and Lyrical Abstraction.Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Georges Mathieu
  26. Ben Enwonwu in a work coat, smiling, beside the clay portrait bust of a woman that he is modelling, in a black-and-white photograph of 1957.
    1940s to 1970sNigerian modernismBen Enwonwu and the Zaria Art Society join Nigerian traditions to modern art around independence in 1960.Ben Enwonwu, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo
  27. Mark Rothko, in glasses and a striped shirt, leaning back with a cigarette in his hand, in a black-and-white photograph of about 1949.
    late 1940s to 1960sColour field paintingRothko and Newman, then Frankenthaler, Louis and Noland, make paintings of large, flat or stained areas of colour.Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still
  28. Andy Warhol, arms folded, in a dark suit and red tie, in front of his screenprint portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, 1980.
    mid-1950s to early 1970sPop artArtists in London and New York take their subjects from advertising, comics and celebrity, and their methods from mass production.Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake
  29. The Stravinsky Fountain in Paris: black machine sculptures and brightly painted figures, among them a pair of red lips, spraying water in a shallow pool beside a Gothic church.
    1920s to the 1970s, and sinceKinetic artCalder's mobiles and Tinguely's machines bring real movement into art, by air, motor and the viewer's own steps.Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
  30. Black-and-white geometric panels by Victor Vasarely running across the facade of the National Theatre in Győr, Hungary.
    1950s to 1970sOp artBridget Riley and Victor Vasarely use pattern and contrast to make flat surfaces seem to move.Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Larry Poons
  31. Open concrete boxes by Donald Judd standing in a line across dry grassland at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, framing one another under a blue sky.
    1960s to 1970sMinimalismJudd, Flavin, LeWitt and Stella reduce art to simple geometric forms, industrial materials and repetition.Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt
  32. A rough basalt column, marked with white paint, standing in the grass by a kerb in Kassel, one of the stones of Joseph Beuys's 7000 Oaks.
    mid-1960s to the 1970s, and afterConceptual artThe idea becomes the work: instructions, language, photographs and actions in place of the made object.Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys
  33. A photorealist painting of a wrecked pale car, its grille crumpled and windscreen cracked, sitting in weeds under a wide blue sky with clouds.
    Late 1960s to the 1980s, and sincePhotorealismClose, Estes, Flack and Bechtle paint from photographs so exactly that the canvas looks like one.Chuck Close
  34. No 1 Poultry in the City of London: a building banded in pink and yellow stone, with a round clock tower above a glazed prow and a tall arched entrance, and a red bus in the street.
    About 1970 to 2000PostmodernismSherman, Kruger, Holzer and Koons borrow from film, advertising and art history, and question originality itself.Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince
  35. A. R. Penck grinning, his hands pressed to his bearded face, in a black-and-white photograph marked up in coloured crayon.
    late 1970s to 1980sNeo-ExpressionismLarge, raw, figurative painting returns, from Baselitz and Kiefer in Germany to Basquiat in New York.Georg Baselitz, A. R. Penck, Anselm Kiefer
  36. Jeff Koons's Puppy, a giant West Highland terrier covered in red, pink, purple and white flowers, against a blue sky in Bilbao, with a glass tower behind.
    mid-1980s to todayNeo-popKoons, Murakami and KAWS remake Pop art's cartoons, toys and consumer goods with an industrial finish and at monumental scale.Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, KAWS
  37. Damien Hirst's giant bronze Verity, a pregnant woman holding a sword aloft, standing on the harbour wall at Ilfracombe against a blue sky.
    1988 to the early 2000sYoung British ArtistsHirst, Emin, Lucas and their Goldsmiths contemporaries take over the London art world with shock and self-promotion.Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas
  38. A coloured-pencil portrait of Elizabeth Peyton, with dark tousled hair and amber glasses, in a black vest.
    1990 to the mid-1990sSlacker artKilimnik, Landers, Pierson and Peyton answer the polish of the 1980s with scatter, confession and deliberate mess.Karen Kilimnik, Sean Landers, Jack Pierson
  39. Takashi Murakami, with glasses, a goatee and his hair tied back, in a dark printed happi coat, seated at a table with a microphone.
    2000 to todaySuperflatTakashi Murakami joins anime, manga and old Japanese painting in flat, bright art that makes no distinction between high and low.Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Aya Takano
  40. Amy Sherald smiling, in large tinted glasses and red and silver earrings, against a blue backdrop.
    2000s to todayContemporary figurative paintingKerry James Marshall, Marlene Dumas, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald put the painted figure back at the centre of art.Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald

Common questions

What are the main art movements?

The main movements of modern art are Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Bauhaus, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Op art, Minimalism and Conceptual art, followed by Neo-Expressionism, Neo-pop and, in Britain, the Young British Artists, and since 2000 Superflat and the return of figurative painting.

What is the order of art movements?

In order: Renaissance (About 1400 to 1600), Baroque (About 1600 to 1750), Rococo (About 1715 to the 1770s), Romanticism (About 1790 to 1850), Impressionism (1860s to 1886), Post-Impressionism (1886 to about 1905), Naive art (1880s to the present), Pointillism (1884 to about 1905), Symbolism (about 1886 to 1910), Art Nouveau (About 1890 to 1910), Modernism (1860s to about 1970), Fauvism (1905 to 1908), Expressionism (1905 to the 1920s), Bloomsbury Group (1905 to the 1930s), Cubism (1907 to the 1920s), Futurism (1909 to about 1916, and after), Abstract art (1910s to the present), Dada (1916 to about 1924), De Stijl (1917 to about 1931), Bauhaus (1919 to 1933), Art Deco (1920s and 1930s), Surrealism (1924 to the 1960s), St Ives School (1928 to the 1960s), Abstract Expressionism (1940s to 1950s), Art Informel (1945 to the 1960s), Nigerian modernism (1940s to 1970s), Colour field painting (late 1940s to 1960s), Pop art (mid-1950s to early 1970s), Kinetic art (1920s to the 1970s, and since), Op art (1950s to 1970s), Minimalism (1960s to 1970s), Conceptual art (mid-1960s to the 1970s, and after), Photorealism (Late 1960s to the 1980s, and since), Postmodernism (About 1970 to 2000), Neo-Expressionism (late 1970s to 1980s), Neo-pop (mid-1980s to today), Young British Artists (1988 to the early 2000s), Slacker art (1990 to the mid-1990s), Superflat (2000 to today), Contemporary figurative painting (2000s to today).

What was the first modern art movement?

Impressionism is usually counted as the first. The group exhibition in Paris in 1874 broke with the official Salon and with the idea that a painting had to be finished, idealised and tell a story. Some historians start earlier, with Courbet's Realism in the 1850s, or with Manet.

Which art movement does my painting belong to?

If you know the artist, start there: most belong to one or two movements, and the pages here list them. If the work is unsigned or the artist unknown, its style, materials and date are the clues, and a valuation from photographs will usually place it.

Not sure which movement it is?

Send photographs of the front, the signature and the back, with any labels or paperwork. Placing a work in its movement and its date is part of every valuation, and the valuation is free, confidential and commits you to nothing.

Confidential valuationConsign a work

Considering a sale, or looking for a particular work?

Whitebank Fine Art is a London art advisory and gallery. A photograph and a few details are enough to begin — a valuation carries no obligation to proceed.

Start a conversationWhatsAppRequest a call

Newsletter

Art news, notable auctions and new artwork listings

Sent twice monthly by email.

Unsubscribe in one click. See our privacy policy.