Timeline

Major movements, in order.

1870–1890
Impressionism
Paris
Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by small, thin brush strokes, emphasis on accurate depiction of light, ordinary subject matter and inclusion of movement.
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1886–1906
Neo-impressionism
France
Neo-impressionism is a term an art movement founded by Georges Seurat . Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte , marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition in Paris. Neo-impressionism was born during the 80s of 19th century when the Impressionism developed to its prime time.
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1886–1905
Post-impressionism
France / the Pacific
Post-impressionism is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism.
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1886–1910
Symbolism
Paris / Vienna
Symbolism is the dream that arrives before Surrealism has a name for it. Painters and poets turn away from the boulevard and toward myth, sickness, desire, and the inner weather of the soul.
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1905–1908
Fauvism
Paris / Collioure
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905-1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Andre Derain and Henri Matisse .
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1905–1925
Expressionism
Germany / Austria / Norway
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.
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1907–1920s
Cubism
Paris
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris (Montmartre and Montparnasse) or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
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1909–1944
Futurism
Italy
Futurism was an Italian art movement of the early twentieth century that aimed to capture in art the dynamism and energy of the modern world. It emphasised speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past. Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurism's artistic style.
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1890–1930
Primitivism
France / Europe
Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate "primitive" experience. In Western art, primitivism typically has borrowed from non-Western or prehistoric people perceived to be "primitive", such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from "primitive" or non-Western art has been important to the development of modern art. Primitivism has often been critiqued for reproducing the racist stereotypes about non-European peoples used by Europeans to justify colonial conquest.
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1915–1930s
Suprematism
Russia
Suprematism is an art movement focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors. The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on visual depiction of objects.
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1915–1930s
Constructivism
Russia
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for practical and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism and the Russian avant-garde.
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1916–1924
Dadaism
Zurich / New York / Paris
Dadaism is an avant-garde intellectual movement that started around World War 1. Although not at first an art movement, it did influence art greatly for a time.
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1918–1925
Purism
Paris
Purism is Cubism after the war, washed and set in order. Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier want objects as clear as bottles on a windowsill — no more shattered cafés.
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1924–1960s
Surrealism
Paris / Belgium / Spain
Surrealism is a twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary. It was Andre Breton, leader of a new grouping of poets and artists in Paris, who, in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), defined surrealism as:
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1911–
Abstraction
Europe / USA
At some point the painting no longer needs a tree. Kandinsky hears color as sound; Klee takes a line for a walk; a century of rooms in this Hub become possible.
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1917–1931
De Stijl
the Netherlands
De Stijl reduces the world to the horizontal, the vertical, and three primaries plus black, white, and gray. Mondrian calls his mature work Neoplasticism.
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1940s–1960s
Abstract Expressionism
New York
After Europe’s catastrophe, the center of the conversation moves to New York. The canvas becomes an arena (Rosenberg) or a field of color you stand inside (Rothko).
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1950s–1970s
Pop Art
London / New York
The soup can, the comic panel, the movie star: Pop treats the supermarket and the television as the new nature.
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1960s–1970s
Minimalism
New York
In visual arts, music, and other mediums, Minimalism is an art movement that began in post-World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives.
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1960s–
Conceptual Art
USA / Europe
Conceptual Art is the room the original homepage already named and never built. Here the idea is the work. The object, if it exists, is a receipt.
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1980–now
After 1980
worldwide
There is no last manifesto. After 1980 the story splits into performance and the body, installation and land, the street, the screen, and a thousand local modernities.

Timeline

How they connect