Modern Art 1870–2000 – Impressionism to Today

A blow-by-blow account of groundbreaking works in Modernism

The story of Modern Art began roughly 150 years ago in Paris, where a circle of painters, whom we now know as Impressionists, shook up the established art world. They painted their pictures with broad strokes that seemed unfinished in light of the meticulous official art, they portrayed life on the street instead of overblown heroic scenes and they escaped the power of the reigning salon painters by organising their own independent exhibitions. Once standard academic practice had been overcome, there was no holding back, and in a constant desire to pursue new roads, one style supplanted the next, always bringing different innovations: after Impressionism, there followed Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, Abstract Art, renewed Realism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art. And still in Post-Modernism and the contemporary work of a Koons, Kelley or Wool, this modernist drive to make something new is still much alive.