Painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and a ...

– artwork in which paint or other

medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation * Medium bomber, a class of war plane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium ...

has been applied to a surface, and in which area and composition are two primary considerations. The art of painting – act of creating paintings.

What ''type'' of thing is painting?

Painting can be described as all of the following: * Art – aesthetic expression for presentation or performance, and the work produced from this activity. The word "art" is therefore both a verb and a noun, as is the word "painting". **

Work of art A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an artistic creation of aesthetic value. Except for "work of art", which may be used of any work regarded as art in its widest sense, including works from literature ...

– aesthetic physical item or artistic creation. A painting is a work of art expressed in paint. ** One of

the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

– as an art form, painting is an outlet of human expression, that is usually influenced by culture and which in turn helps to change culture. Painting is a physical manifestation of the internal human creative impulse. ***

Fine art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwor ...

– in Western European academic traditions, fine art is art developed primarily for aesthetics, distinguishing it from applied art that also has to serve some practical function. The word "fine" here does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline according to traditional Western European canons. *** One of the

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile art ...

– visual arts is a class of art forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking and others, that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature.

Essence of painting

Artistic inspiration Inspiration (from the Latin ''inspirare'', meaning "to breathe into") is an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or visual art and other artistic endeavours. The concept has origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greek ...

Muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in ...

** Afflatus *

Creativity Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed lit ...

Imagination Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...

Styles of painting

Styles of painting by movement

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

– movement in painting, originating in New York City in the 1940s. It emphasized spontaneous personal expression, freedom from accepted artistic values, surface qualities of paint, and the act of painting itself. Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell, and Kline, are important abstract expressionists. *

Academic art Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie ...

– a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies or universities. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles. *

Action painting Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...

– connected to the Abstract Expressionist movement, but more precise in its meaning, Action Painting believes in the expressive power held in the actual act of painting as much as in the finished product. Rosenberg defined the notion of the canvas as seen by the artists in this movement as being 'not a picture but an event'. *

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

– design style prevalent during the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a sleek use of straight lines and slender form. *

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

– decorative art movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Characterized by dense asymmetrical ornamentation in sinuous forms, it is often symbolic and of an erotic nature. Klimt worked in an art nouveau style. *

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

– movement in European painting in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, characterized by violent movement, strong emotion, and dramatic lighting and coloring. Bernini, Caravaggio and Rubens were among important baroque artists. *

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

– school of art, design and architecture founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style is characterized by its severely economic, geometric design and by its respect for materials. The Bauhaus school was created by Walter Gropius. *

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

– style of the Byzantine Empire and its provinces, c. 330–1450. Appearing mostly in religious mosaics, manuscript illuminations, and panel paintings, it is characterized by rigid, monumental, stylized forms with gold backgrounds. *

Classicism Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthet ...

– based on Greek and Roman art of antiquity with emphasis on harmony, proportion, balance, and simplicity. * Color field painting – technique in abstract painting developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Newman, Rothko, and Frankenthaler painted in this manner. *

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called ins ...

– movement of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized the artistic idea over the art object. It attempted to free art from the confines of the gallery and the pedestal. * Constructivism – Russian abstract movement founded by Tatlin, Gabo, and Antoine Pevsner, c. 1915. It focused on art for the industrial age. Tatlin believed in art with a utilitarian purpose. *

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

– revolutionary movement begun by Picasso and Braque in the early twentieth century. It employs an analytic vision based on fragmentation and multiple viewpoints. *

Empire style The Empire style (, ''style Empire'') is an early-nineteenth-century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts, representing the second phase of Neoclassicism. It flourished between 1800 and 1815 durin ...

– sometimes considered the second phase of Neoclassicism, is an early 19th century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts. *

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

– movement, c. 1915–23, that rejected accepted aesthetic standards. It aimed to create antiart and nonart, often employing a sense of the absurd. *

Der Blaue Reiter ''Der Blaue Reiter'' (The Blue Rider) is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May ...

– name derived from a drawing by Wassily Kandinsky that appeared on the cover of the Almanac featuring a blue horseman. Established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Marc and Gabriele Münter their first show was entitled 'First Exhibition by the Editorial Board of the Blue Rider' and was launched to coincide with the last show by the NKV in the same gallery in Munich. *

Die Neue Sachlichkeit The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the '' Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, w ...

(The New Objectivity) – Expressionist movement founded in Germany in the aftermath of World War I by George Grosz and Otto Dix. Its artwork is characterized by a realistic style combined with a cynical and socially critical philosophical stance. Other artists associated with the movement included Christian Schad and Max Beckmann. * The Eight – group of American painters who united out of opposition to academic standards in the early twentieth century. Members of the group were Robert Henri, Arthur Davies, Maurice Prendergast, William James Glackens, Ernest Lawson, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, and George Luks. *

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

– art that uses emphasis and distortion to communicate emotion. More specifically, it refers to early twentieth century northern European art, especially in Germany c. 1905–25. Artists such as Rouault, Kokoschka, and Schiele painted in this manner. * Fauvism – style adopted by artists associated with Matisse, c. 1905–08. They painted in a spontaneous manner, using bold colors. From the French word ''fauve'', meaning "wild beast". *

Flemish School Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especiall ...

– characterised by idealism and experimentation with perspective, Flemish art thrived in the 15th century with artists such as Jan van Eyck,

Rogier van der Weyden Rogier van der Weyden () or Roger de la Pasture (1399 or 140018 June 1464) was an early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commissioned single and diptych portraits. He was highly ...

Hans Memling Hans Memling (also spelled Memlinc; c. 1430 – 11 August 1494) was a painter active in Flanders, who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. He was born in the Middle Rhine region and probably spent his childhood in Mainz. He ...

and

Dirk Bouts Dieric Bouts (born c. 1415 – 6 May 1475) was an Early Netherlandish painter. Bouts may have studied under Rogier van der Weyden, and his work was influenced by van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. He worked in Leuven from 1457 (or possibly earlie ...

. They specialised in portrait painting with religious themes and complicated iconography. *

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

– movement that encompassed a new aesthetic, a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the last 40 years. Fluxus objects and performances are characterized by minimalist but often expansive gestures based in scientific, philosophical, sociological, or other extra-artistic ideas and leavened with burlesque. *

Folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically tr ...

– works of a culturally homogeneous people without formal training, generally according to regional traditions and involving crafts. * Futurism – Italian movement c. 1909–19. It attempted to integrate the dynamism of the machine age into art. Boccioni was a futurist artist. *

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

– European movement beginning in France. Gothic sculpture emerged c. 1200, Gothic painting later in the thirteenth century. Gothic art has a linear, graceful, elegant style more naturalistic than that which had existed previously in Europe. *

Graffiti Art Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

– movement which was very successful in New York in the 1980s. It was named after the spray-can vandalism common in most cities and most associated with the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

system. The two most successful figures of this movement were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The New York art scene embraced Graffiti Art, with several galleries specialising in the genre and a Museum of American Graffiti opening in 1989. *

Group of Seven The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is officiall ...

– began in the early 1900s when several Canadian Artists began noticing a similarity in style. Canadian Painters Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael were often believed to have socialised together through common interests and mutual employment. * Harlem Renaissance – from 1920 until about 1930 African-American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. *

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

– late-nineteenth-century French school of painting. It focused on transitory visual impressions, often painted directly from nature, with an emphasis on the changing effects of light and color. Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro were important impressionists. *

Kitsch Kitsch ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste. The avant-garde opposed kitsch as melodramatic and superficial affiliation wi ...

– German and Yiddish word denoting art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art. *

Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting: ''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...

– Post-War style of abstract painting emanating out of Europe in the late 1940s and a style of American painting emanating out of New York City and Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. Related to

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

and Color Field painting. Practitioners include

Pierre Soulages Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (; 24 December 1919 – 26 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are hel ...

Nicolas de Staël Nicolas de Staël (; January 5, 1914 – March 16, 1955) was a French painter of Russian origin known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting. He also worked with collage, illustration and textiles. Early life ...

Georges Mathieu Georges Mathieu (27 January 1921 – 10 June 2012) was a French abstract painter, art theorist, and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is considered one of the fathers of European lyrical abstraction, a trend of informalism. Bi ...

and many others. * Mannerism – style, c. 1520–1600, that arose in reaction to the harmony and proportion of the High Renaissance. It featured elongated, contorted poses, crowded canvases, and harsh lighting and coloring. * Massurrealism – fusion of the dream like visions of surrealism, pop art and New Media Technology - as well as for an expression of the Hyper-real. *

Minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

– movement in American painting and sculpture that originated in the late 1950s. It emphasized pure, reduced forms and strict, systematic compositions. * Les Nabis – group of French painters active in the 1890s who worked in a subjective, sometimes mystical style, stressing flat areas of color and pattern. Bonnard and Vuillard were members. From the Hebrew word for "prophet." *

Naive Art Naivety (also spelled naïvety), naiveness, or naïveté is the state of being naive. It refers to an apparent or actual lack of experience and sophistication, often describing a neglect of pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. A ''naïve'' may ...

– artwork, usually paintings, characterized by a simplified style, nonscientific perspective, and bold colors. The artists are generally not professionally trained. Henri Rousseau and Grandma Moses worked in this style. *

Neoclassicism Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...

Neo-Classicism Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism w ...

– European style of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that drew inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. Its elegant, balanced works revived the order and harmony of ancient Greek and Roman art. David and Canova are examples of neoclassicists. *

Op Art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

– abstract movement in Europe and the United States, begun in the mid-1950s, based on the effects of optical patterns. Albers worked in this style. * Photorealism – figurative movement that emerged in the United States and Britain in the late 1960s and 1970s. The subject matter, usually everyday scenes, is portrayed in an extremely detailed, exacting style. It is also called superrealism, especially when referring to sculpture. * Pointilism – method of painting developed by Seurat and Paul Signac in the 1880s. It used dabs of pure color that were intended to mix in the eyes of viewers rather than on the canvas. It is also called divisionism or neoimpressionism. * Pop Art – movement that began in Britain and the United States in the 1950s. It used the images and techniques of mass media, advertising, and popular culture, often in an ironic way. Works of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Oldenburg exemplify this style. *

Postimpressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction aga ...

– term coined by British art critic Roger Fry to refer to a group of nineteenth-century painters, including Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, who were dissatisfied with the limitations of expressionism. It has since been used to refer to various reactions against impressionism, such as fauvism and expressionism. * Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – group of English painters formed in 1848. These artists attempted to recapture the style of painting preceding Raphael. They rejected industrialized England and focused on painting from nature, producing detailed, colorful works. Rossetti was a founding member. * Realist movement – nineteenth century movement, especially in France, that rejected idealized academic styles in favor of everyday subjects. Daumier, Millet, and Courbet were realists. In a general sense, refers to objective representation. *

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

– Refers to Europe c. 1400–1600. Renaissance art which began in Italy, stressed the forms of classical antiquity, a realistic representation of space based on scientific perspective, and secular subjects. The works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael exemplify the balance and harmony of the High Renaissance (c. 1495-1520). Means "rebirth" in French. *

Rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

– eighteenth-century European style, originating in France. In reaction to the grandeur and massiveness of the baroque, rococo employed refined, elegant, highly decorative forms. Fragonard worked in this style. * Romanesque – European style developed in France in the late eleventh century. Its sculpture is ornamental, stylized and complex. Some Romanesque frescoes survive, painted in a monumental, active manner. *

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

– European movement of the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth century. In reaction to neoclassicism, it focused on emotion over reason, and on spontaneous expression. The subject matter was invested with drama and usually painted energetically in brilliant colors. Delacroix, Géricault, Turner, and Blake were Romantic artists. *

Situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

– influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Lettrism. The post-war Lettrist International, which sought to fuse poetry and music and transform the urban landscape, was a direct forerunner of the group who founded the magazine 'Situationiste Internationale' in 1957. At first, they were principally concerned with the "suppression of art", that is to say, they wished like the Dadaists and the Surrealists before them to supersede the categorization of art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life. *

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

– art movement advocating pure abstraction and simplicity—form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and colour to the primary colours, along with black and white. Piet Mondrian was the group's leading figure. He published a manifesto titled Neo-Plasticism in 1920. Another member, painter Theo van Doesburg had started a journal named De Stijl, spreading the theories of the group. Their work exerted tremendous influence on the Bauhaus and the International Style. *

Suprematism Suprematism (russian: Супремати́зм) is an early twentieth-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term ''suprematism'' refers to an abstra ...

– Russian abstract movement originated by Malevich c. 1913. It was characterized by flat geometric shapes on plain backgrounds and emphasized the spiritual qualities of pure form. * Surrealism – movement of the 1920s and 1930s that began in France. It explored the unconscious, often using images from dreams. It used spontaneous techniques and featured unexpected juxtapositions of objects. Magritte, Dalí, Miró, and Ernst painted surrealist works. *

Symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sym ...

– painting movement that flourished in France in the 1880s and 1890s in which subject matter was suggested rather than directly presented. It featured decorative, stylized, and evocative images. * Abstract art – * Abstract grid art – * Art Brut – *

Abstract Illusionism Abstract illusionism, a name coined by art historian and critic Barbara Rose in 1967. Louis K. Meisel independently coined the term to define an artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the mid-1970s. History The wo ...

– * Academic Gride art – *

Aestheticism Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be pro ...

– *

Altermodern Altermodern, a portmanteau word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism. It is also the title of the Tate Britain's fourth Triennial ...

– * American Barbizon school – *

American Impressionism American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. The style is characterized by loose ...

– *

American realism American Realism was a style in art, music and literature that depicted contemporary social realities and the lives and everyday activities of ordinary people. The movement began in literature in the mid-19th century, and became an important te ...

– *

American Scene Painting American Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest. It arose in the 1930s as a res ...

– *

Analytical art Universal Flowering (''Mirovoi rastsvet'') is the name given by Pavel Filonov to his system of analytical art. The system arose from cubo-futurist experiments and works that he undertook from 1913 to 1915. It is characterized by very dense, m ...

– * Antipodeans – *

Anti-realism In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument ...

– *

Arabesque The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...

– *

Arbeitsrat für Kunst The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (German: 'Workers council for art' or 'Art Soviet') was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils ...

– *

Art Informel Informalism or Art Informel is a pictorial movement from the 1943–1950s, that includes all the abstract and gestural tendencies that developed in France and the rest of Europe during the World War II, similar to American abstract expressionis ...

– *

Art Photography Fine-art photography is photography created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist, using photography as a medium for creative expression. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stan ...

– * Arte Povera – * Arts and Crafts Movement – *

Ashcan School The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods. ...

– * Assemblage – *

Les Automatistes Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. Les Automatistes were so called because they were influenced by Surrea ...

– *

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name ...

– *

Chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...

– *

Chicago Imagists The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, Surrealism and complete ind ...

Classical Realism Classical Realism is an artistic movement in the late-20th and early 21st century in which drawing and painting place a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th-century neoclassicism and realism. Origins The term "Clas ...

– *

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

– * Danube school – *

Dau-al-Set Dau al Set (), the first post-World War II artistic movement in Catalonia, was founded in Barcelona in September 1948 by poet Joan Brossa. The movement, best known for translating the conscious and unconscious mind into art, was heavily influenced ...

– *

also known as

Neoplasticism Neoplasticism, known in Dutch as ''Nieuwe Beelding'' or the new image, is an avant-garde art theory that arose in 1917 and was employed mainly by Dutch De Stijl artists. The most notable advocates of the theory were the painters Theo van Doe ...

– *

Die Brücke The Brücke (Bridge), also Künstlergruppe Brücke or KG Brücke was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later memb ...

– *

Deconstructivism Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. ...

– * Energy Art movement – *

Fantastic realism The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism (german: Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus) is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Maître Leherb (Helmut Leherb), Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmd ...

– * Figurative art – * Figuration Libre – *

Geometric abstract art Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Although the genre was pop ...

– * Graphic grid art – * Graphic grid in visual art – * Graphic grid in applied art – * Graphic grid in painting – *

Gutai group The was a Japanese avant-garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region by young artists under the leadership of the painter Jirō Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan, in 1954. The group, today one of the most internationally-recognized instances of ...

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Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...

– * Humanistic Aestheticism – * Hypermodernism – *

Hyperrealism Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as w ...

– * Institutional Critique – *

International Gothic International Gothic is a period of Gothic art which began in Burgundy, France, and northern Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century. It then spread very widely across Western Europe, hence the name for the period, which was introduced by th ...

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International Typographic Style The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s. The Internatio ...

– * indian Style – * Les Nabis – * Letterism – *

Lowbrow (art movement) Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and ...

– * Lyco art – *

– * Magic Realism – *

Maximalism In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more". Literature The term ''maximalism'' is sometimes associ ...

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Metaphysical painting Metaphysical painting ( it, pittura metafisica) or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contras ...

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Mingei The concept of , variously translated into English as " folk craft", "folk art" or "popular art", was developed from the mid-1920s in Japan by a philosopher and aesthete, Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), together with a group of craftsmen, including ...

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Modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

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Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

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Modular constructivism Modular constructivism is a style of sculpture that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and was associated especially with Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg. It is based on carefully structured modules which allow for intricate and in some cases infinite ...

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Neo-Dada Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...

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Neo-expressionism Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early-postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called ''Transavantgarde'', '' Junge Wilde'' or ''Neue Wilden'' ('The new wild ones'; 'Ne ...

– * Neo-figurative – * Neoism – *

Neo-primitivism Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate a "primitive" experience. It is also defined as a philosophical doctrine that considers "primitive" peoples as nobler than civilized peoples and was an o ...

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Net art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phys ...

– * New Objectivity – * Northwest School (art) – * Orphism (art), Orphism – * Pixel Art – * Pixel Grid Art – * Plein Air – * Postmodernism – * Precisionism – * Pre-Raphaelitism – * Primitivism – * Purism (arts) – **Purism in painting * Qajar art – * Rasquache – * Realism (arts), Realism – * Remodernism – *

– * Salon (art), Salon – * Samikshavad – * Sfumato – * Shin hanga – * Shock art – * Sōsaku hanga – * Socialist Realism – * Space Art – * Street Art – * Still life – * Stuckism – * Synchromism – * Tachisme – * Toyism – * Transgressive art – * Ukiyo-e – * Underground comix – * Vedute, Veduta – * Vorticism – * Verdadism –

Styles of painting by region

* Eastern art history, Eastern painting ** East Asian painting *** Chinese painting *** Japanese painting ** South Asian painting *** Indian painting *** Indian Grid Tantr painting * Painting in the Americas * Visual art of the United States, American art ** Native American art ** Maya art ** Pre-Columbian art ** Plains hide painting ** Painting in the Americas before Colonization * African art ** Akan art ** Benin art ** Botswanan art ** Egyptian art ** Somalian art ** South African art * Albanian art * Algerian art * Andorran art * Angolan art * Argentine art * Armenian art * Bahamian art * Basque art * Belarusian art * Belgian art * Bhutanese art * Bolivian art * Bosnia and Herzegovina art * Brazilian art * British art * Burmese art * Cambodian art * Canadian art * Caribbean art * Chilean art * Chinese art * Colombian art * Costa Rican art * Croatian art * Cuban art * Cypriot art * Czech art * Danish art * Dominican Republic art * Dutch art * Ecuadorian art * Egyptian art * Estonian art * Ethiopian art * Finnish art * French art * Gambian art * Georgian art * German art * Greek art * Grenadian art * Haitian art * Hawaiian art * Hungarian art * Icelandic art * Indian art * Indonesian art * Iranian art * Iraqi art * Irish art * Israeli art * Italian art * Ivorian art * Jamaican art * Japanese art * Jordanian art * Kazakhstani art * Korean art * Laotian art * Latvian art * Lebanese art * Libyan art * Liechtenstein art * Lithuanian art * Luxembourgian art * Art of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian art * Malaysian art * Mexican art * Moldovan art * Montenegrin art * Miniature art * Miniature Indian art * Miniature Iran art * Miniature mugal art * Miniature kishan gad art * Miniature Kota art * Miniature Rajasthani art * Miniature Marvad art * Mural art * Moroccan art * Nepalese art * Nicaraguan art * Niuean art * Norwegian art * Palestinian arts * Panamanian art * Paraguayan art * Peruvian art * Polish art * Portuguese art * Puerto Rican art * Romanian art * Russian art * Saudi Arabian art * Scottish art * Senegalese art * Serbian art * Slovak art * Slovenian art * Sathya art * Soviet art * Spanish art * Swedish art * Swiss art * Tahitian art * Taiwanese art * Thai art (3 C, 20 P) * Trinidad and Tobago art * Tunisian art * Turkish art * Turkish Cypriot art * Ukrainian art * United Arab Emirati art * Uruguayan art * Uzbekistani art * Venezuelan art * Vietnamese art * Welsh art * Zimbabwean art

History of painting

* Prehistoric art * Ancient art history * Western art history * Eastern art history * Islamic art history * Art periods * History of art

General concepts

Materials

* Acrylic paint – * Aquarelle – * Canvas – * Crayon – * Drawing – * Drying oil – * Egg tempera – * Encaustic painting, Encaustic – * Fresco – * Frottage (surrealist technique), Frottage – * Gesso – * Glair – * Glaze (painting technique), Glaze – * Gouache – * Soil, Ground – * Ink – * Mastic (plant resin), Mastic – * Mineral spirits – * Oil painting – * Paint – * Pigment – * Pastel – * Pencil crayon – * Solvent – * Tempera – * Turpentine – * Varnish – * wash (visual arts), Wash – * Watercolor painting –

Tools

* Airbrush – * Brush – * Easel – * Maulstick – * Model (art), Model – * Palette (painting), Palette – * Palette knife –

Elements

* Atmospheric perspective – * Color – * Body – * Hue – * Tint – * Lightness (color), Tone – * Lightness (color), Value – * Line art, Line – * Imagery – * Impasto – * Imprimatura – * Painterly – * Perspective (graphical), Perspective – * Plastic arts, Plasticity – * Shading – * Sketch (drawing), Sketch – * Spatial organization – * Surface finish, Surface – * Texture (painting), Texture – * Underpainting –

Learning and study

* Academy – * Art criticism (Appreciation) – * Color theory – * Hierarchy of genres – * Art conservation and restoration, Preservation – * Saponification#Saponification in art conservation, Saponification – * Painting, Painter –

Signatures and inscriptions

* Fecit – * Pinxit –

Artists

* Giotto di Bondone – * Jan van Eyck – * Leonardo da Vinci – * Raphael – * Sandro Botticelli – * Titian – * Peter Paul Rubens – * Diego Velázquez – * El Greco – * Caravaggio – * Rembrandt – * Johannes Vermeer – * Francisco Goya – * Édouard Manet – * Edgar Degas – * Claude Monet – * Pierre-Auguste Renoir – * Paul Cézanne – * Vincent van Gogh – * Wassily Kandinsky – * Henri Matisse – * Pablo Picasso – * Piet Mondrian – * Jackson Pollock – * Willem de Kooning – * Andy Warhol –

Famous paintings

* List of most expensive paintings * List of paintings on Soviet postage stamps * ''100 Great Paintings'', a 1980 BBC television series * Sistine Chapel ceiling

By painter

* List of works by Leonardo da Vinci, List of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci * List of works by Michelangelo#Painting, List of paintings by Michelangelo * List of works by Vincent van Gogh, List of paintings by Vincent van Gogh * List of paintings by Claude Monet * List of paintings by Paul Cézanne * List of paintings by Ford Madox Brown * List of paintings by Paul Gauguin * List of paintings by Frans Hals * List of paintings by Frida Kahlo * List of paintings by Georges Emile Lebacq * List of paintings by Edvard Munch * List of paintings by Rembrandt * List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer * List of paintings by John William Waterhouse * List of works by Caspar David Friedrich, List of paintings by Caspar David Friedrich * *

External links

* {{Art world Arts-related lists, Painting Lists of visual art topics, Painting Outlines of culture and arts, Painting Wikipedia outlines, Painting Painting, 1