Carré d'artistes presents a way of understanding art through a wide selection of paintings sorted by style. Understand the logic of pictorial desacralization which results in the mixture of painting styles that have shaped artistic history.
Until the 19th century, pictorial practice was governed exclusively by the representation of exterior scenes and objects in their strictest reality, according to the academic principle of mimesis.
From the Renaissance to Realism, artists depicted Nature and Man following the rhythm of the evolution of pictorial techniques. The Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck, renowned for having perfected oil painting, distinguished himself for his portraits of a new genre while Albrecht Dürer excelled in the art of animal and landscape watercolour. During this period, the painter's emotion is conveyed by the play of colours, textures and symbols.
With the growth of Impressionism and Cubism, figuration takes on a new definition, so much so that the border with abstraction is tight. The notion of reality is distorted through shapes and colours. Surrealism tends to represent the subjective truth of the painter. Even the revival of reality initiated by the pop art movement in the 1960s is hijacked by certain artists who do not hesitate to abuse abstract references.
The foundations of this artistic trend were laid by the expansion of Impressionism and Cubism. Pablo Picasso is the most striking demonstration of this when he did not hesitate to disrupt reality into geometric shapes.
The birth of abstraction is generally attributed to Wassily Kandinsky who for the first time produced a painting that moves away from the visible. From then on, it is a question of representing the sensitive world as the artist perceives it, through colours and shapes.
From then on, contemporary painters seized on this subjective movement and developed new styles of painting such as surrealism or minimalism. A brushstroke becomes a particular interpretation, a plain background a work evoking the passing of time. The academic rupture of mimesis is total: the interference of this new trend within figurative art implies a systematic adaptation of reality by contemporary artists.
Discover with Carré d'artistes the infinite wealth of painting styles that inspire the most talented contemporary artists.