Cluster · 1905 – 1933
The Avant-Garde Explosion
Three decades when everything cracked open. The densest, most influential cluster on the map.
Essays in this cluster
Fauvism
Colour freed from description.
1905 – 1908
6 min
Cubism
A single object, seen from everywhere at once.
1907 – 1922
10 min
Futurism
The worship of speed, machinery, and the violent overthrow of the past.
1909 – 1944
9 min
Suprematism
The supremacy of pure feeling, achieved through pure geometric form on a pure white field.
1915 – 1925
7 min
Constructivism
Art must serve the revolution. The artist is an engineer of the visible.
1919 – 1934
9 min
De Stijl
Reduce visual experience to its irreducible elements: horizontal, vertical, primary colour, black, white, grey.
1917 – 1931
7 min
Dada
If civilisation produced the trenches, the only honest art is anti-art.
1916 – 1924
8 min
Bauhaus
Unify art, craft, and industry. Teach the designer to think from first principles.
1919 – 1933
12 min
Surrealism
Reality is too narrow. The unconscious is the real territory.
1924 – 1966
9 min
Expressionism
Distort the world until it shows what it feels like.
1905 – 1925
8 min