An art movement groups artists who share a style, idea or reaction to the art before them. This page explains the main movements in plain language and links to the WooArts artists and articles for each.
Quick answers
What is an art movement?
It is a period or group of artists linked by a shared approach, such as painting outdoors for natural light or rejecting realism.
What is Impressionism?
Impressionism began in France in the late 1800s. Painters worked outdoors and used loose brushwork and bright color to capture fleeting light.
What is Surrealism?
Surrealism, from the early 1900s, explores dreams and the subconscious, often combining ordinary objects in impossible ways.
What is Pop Art?
Pop Art, from the mid-1900s, treats advertising, comics and packaging as subjects for fine art.
What is hyperrealism?
Hyperrealism pushes realistic painting so far that images can look sharper than a photograph.
Browse by movement
Renaissance
Renaissance artists in Italy and Northern Europe studied linear perspective, anatomy and classical models. Their work often centers on religious, mythological and portrait subjects, painted with careful modeling of light and form.
Impressionism
Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir painted landscapes, cafés and everyday city life. They used short, visible strokes and broken color to record changing light rather than fixed outlines.
Modernism
Modernism covers many experiments from the late 1800s into the mid-1900s, including Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism. Artists questioned representation itself, often flattening space and simplifying form.
Surrealism
Surrealists drew on dreams, chance and psychoanalysis. Techniques such as automatism and collage produced unexpected juxtapositions, and the movement reached painting, sculpture, photography and film.
Pop Art
Pop Art emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, drawing on comics, advertising, consumer goods and celebrity imagery. Artists often used silkscreen, bold outlines and flat color to comment on mass culture.
Hyperrealism
Hyperrealist painters and sculptors work from photographs or close observation to reproduce surfaces with extreme detail. Reflections, skin, fabric and street scenes are common subjects.
Contemporary
Contemporary art covers work made since the late 1900s across painting, sculpture, video, performance and digital media. There is no single style; artists often address identity, technology, politics and the viewer’s role.