The French word ‘Avant-garde’ can be translated to mean front guard, advance guard or vanguard. The vanguard is a select number of highly trained soldiers who survey terrain and plot the most suitable course for an advancing army to follow. In a similar way, the avant-garde movement described a small number of intellectuals and artists who tried to open new cultural or political routes for society to follow, pushing the boundaries of the accepted norm to redefine art, culture and reality. An example of this today can arguably be seen in street art, such as graffiti.

The origin of the Avant-garde art movement can be pinned to May 17^th 1863 when a group of painters whose work had been rejected by the annual Paris Salon of sanctioned academic art, decided to respond by opening the Salon des Refusés. Salon Refusés were then held in 1874, 1875 and 1886, with the aim of challenging the status quo, bewildering the elite and outraging moral society. The group of painters were led by Courbet, who became known as the stereotypical avant-garde artist, with displays of extreme egotism and radical behaviour that saw him destroy major monuments and repeated stays in prison.

Courbet was a realist and his work was rejected by the elite for its ordinary subject matter at a time when mystical scenes depicting gods and goddesses were the norm. It was this notion that art could only come in one style that Courbet and his peers sought to abolish. Millet for instance, chose to concentrate on illustrating the working class, the antithesis of magical maidens, and an inspiration for artists such as Van Gogh and Salvador Dali. Dali himself was a significant participant of the avant-garde art movement, taking it to a new height by letting his complex imagination communicate through the canvas on a level that people would inherently understand.

Ironically, the downfall of the movement came as soon as the artists’ work was validated by the very people they were intending to shock. Once people changed their views to embrace the movement it inevitably could no longer be considered avant-garde. Instead it was known simply as Modern Art, and a new wave of respect dedicated museums such as The Museum for Modern Art in New York to showcase it.

Our Art on Demand gallery contains the following avant-garde prints, posters and canvases: