Author: mkim777

André Derain was a French painter during the late 1800s and the early 1900s. He was a founding member of Fauvism, a movement that focused on the use of unnatural and expressionistic colors in otherwise representational paintings. He developed this movement alongside Henri Matisse, and their paintings were deemed by critics as “les fauves” (meaning the wild beasts) due to their vibrant and unusual use of color.  

André Derain was most well known for his landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. He initially expressed these subjects through Fauvism. However, during the 1920s, he began to adopt a more muted color palette as a result of the influences of Cubism and Paul Cézanne. 

Derain’s work ultimately symbolizes an interesting turn in art history, marking the shift from representational uses of color towards a more expressionistic use of color as seen in later movements.

For more information on Derain, click here.

Art Nouveau, also known as the Glasgow Style, was a movement popularized in the 1890s. Its primary goal was to modernize design and alleviate the disconnect between fine and applied art. As such, many pieces during this movement had real-world purpose; examples of popular applications of this art included posters and advertisements. This flowing art style also featured images drawn from nature such as plants, stems, and flower blossoms.

The style of the art itself drew heavily upon the unification of both organic and heavily graphic forms. The flow between these two forms was supported by the use of fluid lines–an aspect of the movement that overtook color in its importance. The reasoning behind this graphic yet simple approach was based off of the belief that earlier art was too ornamental. Thus, in response to what artists believed to be excessive ornamentation, Art Nouveau developed the core idea that function should dictate form. This belief ultimately made the movement become an important predecessor to modernism.

An example of a piece in the Art Nouveau style is shown above (a Job advertisement for cigarette papers created by Alphonse Mucha). Also, you can click here for more information on the Art Nouveau movement.