Avant-Garde Art Movements: History, Characteristics and Isms

The Art of the Avant-Garde

The term Avant-Garde (of French origin) designates a series of artistic renewals that fought for radical forms of expression. The movement sought to break completely with the art of the past. Emerging in the final decade of the 19th century and the early 20th century, it consolidated during the interwar period (1917–1939).

Avant-garde art consists of a heterogeneous group of movements spanning several decades. Despite this variety, these movements share specific common characteristics:

• Elitism: It is often considered an unpopular art form, aimed at a prepared elite.
• Distortion of Reality: The artist does not intend to copy, embellish, or idealize. Instead, they may distort, destroy, or delete reality to build new objects.
• Rejection of Tradition: It dispenses with enshrined artistic traditions and established canons.
• Irrationality: The art opens the door to the irrational.

In literature, these characteristics are joined by specific traits, such as the use of a new, often broken or unrecognizable syntax, and an enhancement of the visual over the purely linguistic. Preferred subjects include modern urban life, humor, social criticism, and politics.

Literary Avant-Garde: The Isms

Avant-garde movements followed one another rapidly. These are often referred to as "isms" due to the suffix used in their names. Key movements include:

Futurism

• Characteristics: Exaltation of machines, a taste for speed, dynamism, and the rupture of syntax.
• Key Authors: Marinetti and Mayakovsky.

Cubism

• Characteristics: Decomposition of reality, recovery through free associations of concepts, special typographical arrangements (calligrams), and the use of collage.
• Key Author: Guillaume Apollinaire.

Dadaism

• Characteristics: Nihilistic nature and the rejection of rationality.
• Key Author: Tristan Tzara.

Imagism

• Characteristics: Juxtaposition of images and metaphors that provoke bewilderment, importance of musicality, and the use of colloquial terms.
• Key Authors: Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.