The art of the early 20th century was a reaction against the naturalism of the Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. The Post-Impressionists were interested above all in structure and in using colour and technique to define personal style. The Expressionists explored emotion, using line and colour to convey the subject’s psychological state. The Cubists and Futurists sought to convey the multiple perspectives and dynamism of modern life. These movements opened the way for the profound changes in ideas about the nature of art which evolved over the remainder of the century.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Post-Impressionism was the term used by the critic Roger Fry about the art in the period between the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Like the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists drew scenes from every-day life, but now artists reacted against naturalism, using light and colour to focus on form, structure and expression. The distinctive pen and pencil marks of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), emphasis on three-dimensional form in the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), and bold outlines of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954) resulted in stunning works which drew attention to the practice of drawing itself and led the way for the revolutionary developments of the early 20th century. The sculptor August Rodin was a prolific draughtsman too, commenting at the end of his life, “It’s very simple. My drawings are the key to my work.”

 EXPRESSIONISM

Expressionism marked a new interest at the turn of the 20th century in the ideals of Romanticism. The first artists to explore the distortion of reality to express inner feelings and ideas were the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863-1944), the Austrian Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), and the German Paula Mondersohn-Becker who died when she was only 31. But it was Klimt’s protegé, Egon Schiele (1890-1918), and his rival, Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), who fully developed the first wave of Expressionism, with portraits charged with sexual and psychological tension, represented in their drawings by powerful, angular lines and jarring touches of colour. They were followed in Germany in 1905 by Die Brücke, a group led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), and in 1911 by another group, Der Blaue Reiter, which included Franz Marc (1880-1916) and the Russian Wasilly Kandinsky (1866-1944).

CUBISM & FUTURISM

Following on from Cézanne’s exploration of three-dimensional form, Cubism originated in about 1907 with Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) who wanted to fragment the viewer’s perception of reality into multiple viewpoints within the same picture. The Spaniard Juan Gris (1887-1927), who began to develop his own ‘Analytical Cubism’ in 1911, was convinced of the importance of Mathematics in painting by the artist and theorist Jean Metzinger (1883-1956). By 1913, Gris was shifting to what was known as called ‘Synthetic Cubism’, involving the extensive use of collage which is referenced in his drawing here of The Smoker. Around the same time in Italy, artists such as Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) were developing Futurism which denounced the past and sought to capture the dynamism of the modern world.