Modernism: 1890-1940

Modernism developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a movement that focused on new inventive forms of expression, using different types of paints and materials to mark an obvious deviation from traditional art forms.

Artists of the movement concentrated on the expression of ideas and beliefs, visions and abstractions as opposed to representing what is real. It involved audience participation so that facts about the artist and his intentions could be used attain to a sense of his environment before the work was judged. Paul Cezanne is known as the 'Father of Modernism' whilst Edouard Manet is another leading modernist artist.