1. 1914 – Present See Key Concept 4.3.IV.A
Art in Unit 4
1914 – Present
See Key Concept 4.3.IV.A

2. Dadaism, the Dada Movement founded in Zurich in 1916 by a group of refugees from WWI and lasting only seven years, got its name from a nonsense word. It protested the madness of war, the Great War, the “war to end all wars,” Ten million people were slaughtered or maimed. Dadaist artists felt they could no longer trust reason and the establishment. Their alternative was to overthrow all authority and cultivate absurdity.
Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919)
Artist: Hannah Höch

3. Futurism. During the decade after the birth of Cubism, the world witnesses astounding changes. Technology zoomed ahead at breakneck speed, transforming the world from agrarian to industrial, from rural to urban. Against a backdrop of World War I, Europe erupted in political chaos. Artists searched for new forms to express this upheaval and Futurism in Italy adapted the forms of Cubism to redefine the nature of art. Futurism began in 1909 as a literary movement of Italian poet F.T. Marinetti and painter Umberto Boccioni urged painters to forsake art of the past for the “miracles of contemporary life,” which he defined as railroads, ocean liners, and airplanes. Futurism died fast. It highlighted speed, technology, machinery, in essence – the future.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni 1913

4. .
Cubism
20th Century Art – a turning point – Cubism. The style got its name from Matisse’s dismissal of a Cubist landscape by Georges Braque as nothing but “little cubes.” Although the four “true” Cubists – Picasso, Braque, Bris, and Leger – broke objects into a multitude of pieces that were not actually cubes, the name stuck. Cubism liberated art by establishing, In Cubist painter Fernand Leger’s words, that “art consist of inventing and not copying.”

5. Guernica by Pablo Picasso 1937
Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco hired the German air force “Luftwaffe” to destroy the Basque town of Guernica. For three hours warplanes dropped bombs, slaughtering 2,000 civilians, wounding thousand more, and razing the undefended town. The Spaniard Picasso, filled with patriotic rage, created this mural in one month. It is mean to create a powerful effect of anguish. He used a black-white-gray palette to emphasize hopelessness and purposely distorted figures to evoke violence. The jagged lines and shattered planes of Cubism denote terror and confusion, while a pyramid format holds the positions together. The slain fighter with a broke sword implying defeat, the bull is not fascism, ut it is brutality and darkness the horse represents the people.

6. The Persistence of Memory, 1931 by Salvador Dali
Surrealism, a direct offspring of Dada two years later, began as a literary movement and grew out of Freudian free-association and dream analysis, a form of creating without conscious control, to tap unconscious imagery. Surrealism, which implies going beyond realism, deliberately courted the bizarre and irrational to express buried truths unreachable by logic. Surrealist German artist Max Ernst practiced improved art, distancing himself as much as possible from conscious control. Others like Spanish Salvador Dali used scrupulously realistic techniques to present hallucinatory scenes that defied common sense.
The Persistence of Memory, 1931 by Salvador Dali
The Entire City, by
Max Ernst