Art history
Accessible chronological markers connecting artworks, artists, ideas and collections.
Art movements provide useful reference points, but their borders remain flexible. Artists travel, respond to one another and sometimes work against their period. These dates are starting points for understanding major changes in how art is made and seen.
Six starting points
Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the European Renaissance renewed the study of antiquity, the body and pictorial space. Perspective, observation of nature and portraiture developed differently across Italian and northern European centres.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
From the 1860s, Impressionist artists pursued changing light, modern life and the sensation of a moment. Visible brushwork, juxtaposed colour and outdoor painting challenged academic expectations while relying on careful framing.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
Cubism questioned traditional perspective by showing subjects from several angles at once. Forms were analysed, fragmented and rebuilt; collage later brought ordinary materials directly into the artwork.
An essential reference point for placing artworks, understanding their breaks with tradition and finding relevant collections.
Formally launched in 1924, Surrealism explored dreams, the unconscious, chance and unexpected association across painting, photography, film, poetry and objects.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Abstract Expressionism made New York central to a new international scene. Gesture, physical trace, expansive colour and large scale reshaped the relationship with painting.
Contemporary art is not one style. Since the 1970s it has encompassed painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance, installation, digital and participatory practices.
