Avantgarde art 19141939 Author:Jean Luc Daval The period between the two World Wars was onc of unprecedented ferment. An art explosion ocurred all over Europe, not least in Russia, and it had profound repercussions in the United States. the established masters steadily developed their art (Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Chagall, Duchamp). Photography came into its own, especially in the United ... more »States (Stieglitz, Sheeler, Strand, Weston, Man Ray). The avante-garede cinema became a fruitful field of creative innovation (Leger, Man Ray, Duchamp, Dali).. The theatre became experimental as never before (Moscow, Paris, Berlin).
A new sensibility found expression in abstract art (Suprematism and Constructionism in Russia, Mondrian and the De Stigl movement in Holland), while the Expressionists carried out an unsparing critique of contemporary society (Beckmann, Grosz, Otto Dix and Schad in Germany Rouault and Soutine in France). The anti-art revolt of Dada (in New York), Zurich, Berlin, Cologne and Paris) and the brilliant adepts of Surrealism (Max Earnest, Miro, Masson, Dali, Tanguy, Margritte) created a fascinating welter of forms rooted in the subconcious and denounced the incoherence and absurdity of a world again drifting towards war. The great builders and designers, on the other hand, beieved in the future and expressed their confidence in a long series of epoch-making works (the Bauhaus, Gropius, Le Corsbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright).