The avant-garde as a phenomenon appeared in all spheres of art around the 1910s. You can name its main names and directions, but it is almost impossible to formulate common features. This is a whole system of styles, concepts, theories, languages, schools that penetrate each other.
Avant-garde in the visual arts can be understood as an experiment – with a concept, color, form. The Russian avant-garde in painting grew, of course, from Western painting trends: impressionism, post-impressionism and symbolism. The avant-garde movement did not form a single style, not a single school included the word “avant-garde” in its name, art critics did not use this term.
Expressionism
This movement, which emerged in 1905-1909, did not have a clear, definite program, proclaimed subjective sensations and subconscious impulses as the basis of artistic creativity. The artist translates his own emotions through his paintings.
Cubism
Cubism is an avant-garde trend in the visual arts, primarily in painting, which originated at the beginning of the 20th century and is characterized by the use of emphatically geometrized conventional forms, the desire to “split” real objects into stereometric primitives.
Suprematism
The direction in abstract painting, which consists in a combination of the simplest colored geometric shapes (square, circle, triangle) and volumetric forms superimposed on a plane.
How to understand abstract art?
The key idea in understanding abstract art is in the approach itself. Do not try to distinct objects or guess what the artist wanted to say by the painting. Just look for some time and refer to your emotions!