Painting

Street art is a contemporary art movement which includes all forms of art created in the street or more generally in public spaces. Key to this movement is the use of public spaces as a means of expression and a way of addressing a message to a large number of people. Far from being something new in history, modern graffiti marked the beginning of street art. It was born in the 1960s in the United States, in the city of Philadelphia. One of the city's inhabitants started to write his name on the city's wall to catch the attention of the one he loved. Many others copied him across the city. By the end of the 60s, it had spread and reached New York, at a time where urban traffic was dense, when the city was becoming increasingly engulfed by concrete, suburbs were starting to appear and advertising was omnipresent. At the same time, the commercialisation of spray-paints also encouraged its growth. The beginning of street art was linked to a spirit of vandalism. Among the most famous graffiti artists of the time were Quik, Futura 2000 and Phase 2. Graffiti can take numerous forms, such as tagging (signatures) and frescos, large-scale works which use decorative schemes, patterns and lettering. Little by little, street art spread to a global scale and new urban methods of expression appeared, such as stencilling or stickers. Each artist established themselves with their own trademark that can be recognised thanks to a unique signature or style …the rat by Banksy, the mosaics by Invader, the little white men by Jérôme Mesnager… In France, street art made its debut at the start of the 1970s but didn't really take off until the 80s with artists like Blek le Rat and Jérôme Mesnager. New dynamics appeared and most notably, the works began to be created with their perennity in mind. This can be explained by various different factors. Increasing numbers of artists wanted to conserve their artworks and paint more greater peace of mind, especially as police repression against street artists became more severe in the 1980s and 90s. Street art caught the attention of gallery owners and the first exhibition of a graffiti artist's work took place in 1972 in New York. The shift from the street to the art market questioned the movement's very essence and divided artists, many of them fearing its institutionalisation. Today, many artists combine street work and works created in a studio, which are then exhibited in some of the biggest contemporary art galleries. The street has become a springboard for achieving recognition. The most expensive street artists on the art market continue to work in urban areas legally, in authorised spaces. The biggest names in street art today use this medium: JonOne, Shepard Fairey, Blek le Rat, Jef Aérosol, Banksy and Miss Tic. On Artsper, you can find a large selection of contemporary paintings by well-known and emerging street artists alike. Explore the works of famous contemporary artists such as the legendary M. Chat but also discover minimalist works by L'atlas, striking portraits by Jef Aerosol or colourful geometric works by Okuda.

Abstract painting is a form of expression which contrasts with representational art, where capturing the likeness of the subject is presented as the artist's ultimate objective. Abstract painting is in fact the very opposite of figurative art. Even if we are not able to understand the meaning behind an abstract work without additional information, it can nonetheless succeed in conveying a sense of emotion and feeling. We tend to associate the birth of abstraction with the artist Wassily Kandinsky and the artistic revolution he initiated during the 20th century. As one of the movement's pioneers, he was at the forefront of the breakaway from representational art along with Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and Kupka. Kandinsky not only shared his views on abstraction through his art but also in his written work. In 1910 he published his book “Concerning the Spiritual in Art" in which he defended the symbolic importance of each of the elements present in painting and which gave each artwork a spiritual dimension. In the same year, he unveiled his first abstract piece, entitled “Abstract watercolour". Abstract art was born. Figurativism had been left to one side in favour of a new movement where artists dealt directly with the intangible and immaterial, without explicitly identifying a subject matter. Several sub-genres started to emerge. Kazimir Malevich became known for his legendary 1915 painting “Black Square", followed by “White on White" in 1918, with which he laid the foundations for Suprematism. Malevich believed that a painting was composed of an ensemble of independent forces which could evolve together in the order to find a sense of harmony and equilibrium within the work. Abstraction can also take on a more lyrical form, especially when accompanied by music. Kandinsky's the “Picture with the Black Arch" is an excellent example of this. The large-scale painting was painted in 1912 and is seen as a marking the turning point for a new era in the history of art. As well as his work on the composition of shapes and colours, Kandinsky had synesthesia. His condition can be seen as a decisive factor in triggering the artist's desire to create a new artistic language. His senses intertwined and became one, transforming sounds into shapes and colours. Kandinsky's use of colour is much more than a question of aesthetics; it was inherent to the way he perceived the world. In this abstract painting, each colour has been carefully chosen and is filled with symbolic meaning. In his abstract two-dimensional painting, Kandinsky succeeds in ensuring that the spectator can feel and hear an entire orchestra playing a Wagner opera. Geometric abstraction both stems from and contrasts with lyrical abstraction, which geometric abstract artists summarised as “abstract landscaping". As its name suggests, this new form of abstraction is centred around the use of geometric shapes to create a sense of purity in the painting. Lines, squares, triangles and circles all collide with the use of bold, block colours on a two-dimensional surface. Kupka was one of the movement's leading figures but nonetheless did not want to be associated with it, believing that art should be the very opposite of abstract; it should be concrete and real. Alongside him, Mondrian laid the foundations for geometric abstraction with his characteristic use of neat shapes and rectangles. The artist developed his unique style by structuring his paintings around an underlying orthogonal grid and using sharp right angles. And last but not least, it is important to remember the influence that both Robert and Sonia Delaunay had on the development of abstraction. The couple seduced the French critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire with their circular shapes and use of colour. Apollinaire christened their art Orphism, a reference to the mythological Greek figure Orpheus as well as to the title of one of his own poems, which he felt was reminiscent of the 'luminous language' conveyed in their paintings. In this regard, Orphism seems to have more in common with lyrical rather than geometric abstraction. Although abstract art marked a decisive break from prior artistic traditions, the movement can also be seen as the inevitable and logical result of the work and thinking of previous artists. At the start of the century the Fauvist movement explored the importance of colour, whilst the Cubists started to deconstruct shapes and play with geometry. In a similar way, German Expressionism, which was born in 1905, encouraged the idea that independent emotions, detached from reality, should be the focus of an artist's work. Thanks to abstraction, modern art has been able to excel and reach its very peak. By no longer focusing on physical subjects, artists are no longer limited to representing recognisable reality. Abstract art has a universal language to share and convey. Since its beginnings, abstraction has been significantly shared across the world and has contributed a great deal to contemporary thinking today.

Throughout art history, landscape painting has remained a prominent art genre, alongside portrait, genre and history painting. The desire to represent the natural world artistically has been shared across the world. Landscape painting can be found in Western art as well as in Asian works in China and Japan. Despite the undeniable efforts made by artists from Antiquity until modern times to promote the genre, landscape painting only became truly established in the 15th and 16th centuries, thanks in part to the Flemish painter Joachim Pantiner who invented the world landscape. For the first time in Western art, nature became a subject for a painting in an of itself, not only as part of a great scene. Another key factor that contributed to the development of landscape painting was the influence of the Protestantism in Holland. The protestant doctrine was hostile to religious iconography and forbade the use of biblical images which were feared to encourage idolatry. Between the 16th and 17th century a group of Flemish and Dutch artists emerged who specialised in painting pastoral scenes, still lifes and various kinds of landscapes: autumnal landscapes, snow-covered landscapes, seascapes, garden landscapes, countryside landscapes etc. For art historians, the French painter Claude Gellée, otherwise known as le Lorrain, stands out as the landscape artist who successfully gave more prestige to the genre. Artists such as Watteau, Vermeer and El Greco also helped to increase the genre's notoriety thanks to their very individual and unique styles. From the 19th century onwards, landscape painting no longer needed to prove itself as a genre and it became much more than just a decorative art form. The majority of painters at the time were inspired by the genre's unique techniques and the number of landscape paintings produced equalled that of portraits. Watercolour was particularly popular. The birth of photography in the 1850s and the development of Romanticism both helped to make nature an interesting choice of subject for an artwork. What's more, the Industrial Revolution led many artists to idolise nature as a supreme source of “truth" that was being lost and corrupted in the city. William Turner and Caspar David Friedrich made nature a figurative subject in their paintings and used it to express tormented feelings of melancholy and represent emotions in their purest form. Last but not least, influenced by the Orientalist movement, many artists glorified travelling to faraway lands, in search of exoticism among mysterious foreign landscapes. In the 19th century Claude Monet revolutionised landscape painting with the Impressionist movement and marked a turning point in the genre's development. Monet emphasised the depiction of light in his works, not the likeness of the subject or the precision of the brushstroke. He also helped popularise plein air painting and often took his oil paints and canvases outside to paint the scene he had in front of his eyes. The landscape painting didn't have to resemble the subject but it tried to express the colours and the individual perception of the artist.  We can also think about  Starry night painting  by Van Gogh.   In the 20th century, an array of art movements reinterpreted landscape painting, each in their own individual way. During this period, we often think of Piet Mondrian's symbolic windmills or the dark and lonely houses of the Realist artist Edward Hopper. The Cubists, the Surrealists and even abstract artists have all created landscape paintings. In short, since the 19th century landscape painting has been established as a key genre, even if the desire to represent nature in all its various forms has not always been for the same reasons. Explore our collection of modern and contemporary paintings and discover the range of landscape paintings that we have on offer, in acrylic paint, oil paint and more. You will find works from the likes of Hervé Di Rosa, Nicolas Fropo de Habart, Olle Svanlund and René-François Grégogna.

Portraiture is one of the most important subjects in painting. The discipline has changed significantly over time and has a fascinating history. In antiquity, portraits were exclusively reserved for gods and the most influential people in society. Paintings and statues representing the bodies of the deceased were erected to decorate tombs in Egypt. They weren’t realistic but rather had a very standardised way of representing each part of the body. In contrast to the Egyptians, painters and sculptors in Greece, who had a more in depth knowledge of the human anatomy, were more concerned about realism. Many paintings from this period were done on vases and depicted gods and mythological scenes. In the Middle Ages, most portraits were commissioned and featuring the most important people of the time; they were painted into religious scenes to emphasise their piety and faith, along with their social status. Once these works of art had been painted, they were often donated to churches and monasteries. The Renaissance marked a renewal for the arts and portraiture was no exception. At the beginning of this period, artists were unconcerned about lifelike, realistic work. Sitters or the subjects represented were identifiable through the use of symbolic objects and the inclusion of their name. Giotto revolutionised portraiture by imitating sculpture. He began to paint shadows, the subjects’ expressions, effects of depth and began to use foreshortening. His knowledge soon began to spread. Brunelleschi then introduced the idea of perspective in architecture, a concept which Masaccio adapted to painting. Italy became the centre of portraiture and the most important Italian families (including the Médici family) commissioned artwork by the best painters. Competition between these painters led them to innovate and led them to produce some of the greatest artworks in history. The most famous is undoubtedly the Mona Lisa by Leonardo de Vinci. In Northern Europe during the sixteenth century, Flemish art was restricted by iconoclasm during “the reformation”, a period during the depiction of religious figures was banned. Artists turned to courtly art which was particularly popular during the following centuries. A century earlier, Flemish art had marked a turning point with Jan Van Eyck, the inventor of oil painting (the preferred painting technique of all Renaissance painters) and master of detailed realism, who influenced an entire generation of Flemish painters. Over the following centuries, portraiture continued to be an art form for the elite of society, but painters grew increasingly concerned about depicting realistic figures and communicating the sitter’s inner world and emotions. The 20th century saw a growing trend: subjects were not painted to look beautiful (sometimes to their great dismay). At the end of the 19th century, impressionist painters became less reliant on sculpted models and sculpture’s influence. They left their studios and painted portraits outside, “en plein air”. They captured the light as they saw it and painted groups of people together rather than in in several stages. Modern and contemporary art of the 20th century saw anything go when it came to portraits. Artists like Gustave Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and Lucien Freud turned traditional techniques and codified rules on their heads and developed their own unique styles. Discover portraits by Philippe Pasqua, Robert Combas, Guangyu Dai and Erró on Artsper.

Geometry has always been one of the bases of artistic innovation, starting with the pyramids in Egyptian art, the use of the golden ration from Ancient Greece and Rome to the Renaissance. In the 20th century, geometry is at the heart of abstract art and minimalism. Piet Mondrian, Malevitch, Vassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Theo Van Doesburg, Victor Vasarely are some of the iconic artists whose works are mostly geometric. 

Pop Art comes from the term “popular art" and refers to the art movement that first appeared in the UK during the 1950s, before spreading across the world. Pop Art has not only influenced the visual arts (collage, sculpture...) but has also had an impact on music and fashion. Among the many technological revolutions that have touched the history of painting, one of the most significant is certainly acrylic painting, a paint made from a combination of pigments, resin and turpentine. In comparison with traditional oil paint, acrylic has numerous advantages: it dries incredibly quickly, doesn't need varnish and is highly durable. Several Pop Art artists preferred using this more modern paint.The popularization of silk screening, a stencil printing technique, also contributed to Pop Art's success. Examples of American Pop Art are often printed in series (using silk screen printing or other techniques) and created using a range of innovative industrial processes. These innovations were initially largely discredited and even subject to scorn until two key figures of the Pop Art movement emerged and helped promote these techniques. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were among the pioneers to openly express their preference for these new methods. By appropriating these techniques, which had once been exclusively used in an industrial context, the two major Pop Art figures revolutionized the art world. Contemporary painting had been popularized since and an artwork's value is no longer measured by its rarity or by the subject depicted.American Pop Art turned its back on a long artistic tradition and paved the away for post-modern contemporary art, taking everyday objects from mass culture as its subjects (Campbell's soup, Coca-Cola). Subjects were intentionally chosen because they were banal, popular and ordinary.To reinforce the movement's drastic break from the Fine Arts and its traditional subject matter, artists worked with a bright color palette, essentially using primary colors: red, yellow and blue. The use of vivid colors can be found in dozens, if not hundreds of kitsch Pop Art paintings.The movement was critical of consumer society and often ironically used famous figures from popular culture to convey their criticism (Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger, Mickey Mouse, Audrey Hepburn). These illustrations, which are reminiscent of advertisements or comic strips, are characterized by their use of very simple lines and minimalist details.The desire to desacralize art is also reminiscent of the ideas of Dada or Marcel Duchamp's avant-gardism. However, for American and British Pop Art, their main goal was to ensure that culture was made accessible to the largest number of people possible. The Pop style made its mark very quickly and simultaneously created a new style of painting. Pop Art's philosophy emphasizes the power of images, the industrialized consumer society's new fetish. Nonetheless, from the 1970s onwards, many of the movement's artists decided to abandon Pop Art for other protest art movements.On Artsper you can explore a range of Pop Art paintings from both well-known contemporary Pop Art artists as well as emerging artists. Some of the greatest painters of Pop Art include: James Rosenquist, David Salle, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and David Hockney.

Minimalism is a movement that began in the 1960s as a reaction against the exacerbated subjectivity of expressionism. Its motto: “less is more". Economy in means is essential in minimalism. Extreme sobriety is the common denominator of minimalist art, often relying on the depiction of geometric forms in primary colors. Minimalist artworks often appear as sophisticated and conceptual, as the idea outweighs the production. Some of the painters of this movement are: Frank Stella, Sol Le Witt, Malevitch or Ad Reinhardt. Minimalism is an offshoot of the school of abstraction, focusing on the extreme simplification of form and the idea that art should have its own reality, rather than representing any another thing. It developed in the USA during the post-war period of Western art, largely throughout the 60s and 70s. Minimalist art is often based on the use of basic shapes or lines, or sometimes even just block colour. Generally, the colours used are bright primary colours, but the palettes are usually very limited, sometimes even monochromatic.Minimalism seeks to make art more accessible, as the viewer need only respond to the painting itself, its form and its medium. This takes away any necessity to be familiar with Art History or to recognise any references in the piece to fully appreciate the art. Pioneer of the movement Frank Stella once said the point of his paintings was that “what you see is what you see". Discover minimalist paintings from the likes of Barbara Todd and Fernando Munoz Zuloaga in Artsper's extensive catalogue.

The nude is an artistic genre that appeared in antiquity and is present in all art forms. It is an important part of the classical artistic training, with the tradition of the study of live models in the studio. Between realism and abstraction, nude painting is still extremely popular in contemporary art, even more so as we live in a world in which the image and the appearance are essential. Throughout the ages, the epiction of the nude body reflected society's beauty standards and its fears: Egon Sciele's emaciated bodies or Lucian Freud's pallid color palette reflect, beyond personal aesthetics, the tormented state of mind of an age. Some of the modern and contemporary artists that painted nudes are: Gustav Klimt, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele, Jenny Saville, Eric Fischl or Philippe Pearlstein. When browsing Artsper's key artists, do not miss Philippe Pasqua, Robert Combas or Guy Denning.