Modern Painting

When contemporary art comes to your home!

What is Montableaudeco? It is nothing but a platform that is full of a number of modern paintings. Here you will find original modern paintings and high quality art reproductions from the world's most renowned artists. Whatever your need, Montableaudeco will certainly satisfy you.

Brief overview of modernism and contemporary art

The period between the 1860s and the 1970s was marked by a revolution in Western art, propelling “postmodernism” to the fore. All "modernist" works born of this revolution represent what historians and art critics call "modern paintings". Contemporary art, on the other hand, includes all the works of art produced between the end of the Second World War and today. Montableaudeco.com mainly presents contemporary works, because they obviously come from the best artists of this century. Nevertheless, modern art enthusiasts have no trouble, because Montableaudeco.com has also thought of them. Our site also offers contemporary works of modern art, paintings inspired by impressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism...

The history of the modern painting

At the end of the 1800s, the European industrial revolution completely changed the course of social, economic and cultural life. Faced with these multiple radical changes, artists did not remain indifferent. This is how they set up modern art in order to denigrate religious and allegorical works commissioned by the government, as well as all traditional modes of representation. They introduced into their works all parts of the newly modernized daily life while mixing elements of high and low culture. Art for art's sake surfaced in the realm of modern art paintings, replacing traditional subjects and styles including portraiture, still lifes and realism. Indeed, modernism was intended to enhance the unique elements specific to each medium, explains art critic Clément Greenberg. The modern painting was part of a process of creating a purely optical world that exists only on a flat canvas: something that several artistic movements, including Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, have tried without success.

Modern painting techniques

Modern art paintings underwent several changes between the late 1800s and the 1950s. In the past, painting was done by defining planned compositions and studio work: a technique the Impressionists rejected in favor of plein air painting and the application of thick layers of wet paint to capture a fleeting moment. The fallout of the industrial revolution on street life was a constant concern of these painters; it was difficult to browse through their works of modern art oil painting without finding subjects relating to wandering strollers and isolated people in urban scenes. Some of these artists preferred arbitrary but vibrant colors for their compositions, such as Henri Matisse. Others, on the other hand, focused on form and produced works full of fantasy, this is the case with cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.Other painters are surreal, their works are completely removed from the outside world and immerse readers in unprecedented illusions The compositions not referring to any existing object in real life, mainly the colorful scenes of Wassily Kandinsky and the grids of Piet Mondrian.

According to Clément Greenberg's theory of modernism, the abstract expressionists achieved the purest form of modern painting, and are associated with the end of modernism. Their splatters at least had all the unique qualities of paint, although they didn't create a recognizable subject. Some artists have tried to make a connection between lower and higher forms of culture. The artist Jackson Pollock has made a great reputation for his drip paintings made of a mixture of sand, broken glass and nails. Futurism, Expressionism, Orphism, Suprematism and Precisionism are the main other movements associated with modern painting.

The main artists of modern painting

Edouard Manet is a modern painter known for his controversial subjects and style. This is also the reason why many consider him the first modern painter. He drew inspiration from earlier paintings, elements from works by Raphael and Titian along with traditional styles of portraits, still lifes and landscapes. Edouard Manet produced two works featuring nude women: "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (1862-1863) and "Olympia" (1863).

In his work "Le bonheur de vivre" (1905-06), Henri Matisse also played with these styles. Matisse meanwhile created a modern pastoral scene using vibrant and arbitrary colors and a biased perspective. With large flat brushstrokes, Paul Cézanne created an extraordinary composition with variable planes and a flattened perspective, making his work "The Basket of Apples" (1893) distinctive, as well as his other famous modern paintings. Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) also abounds in multiple perspectives and a fragmented visual space. This famous work, telling the story of a group of prostitutes in a brothel, is the result of a fusion of cultures (lower and higher) in a purely modernist style. Wassily Kandinsky's "Composition VII" (1913), Joan Miro's "The Birth of the World" (1925), Jackson Pollock's "Number 1A, 1948" (1948) and the series of mainly white, black, red, blue grids and Yellows by Piet Mondrian are the most famous major modern abstract paintings. The list of famous modern painters is not exhaustive, we can also mention Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Robert Delaunay, Salvador Dali, Paul Klee, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.