The Avant-Garde Movements: A History of 20th Century Art

The Avant-Garde: A 20th Century Artistic Revolution

The term Avant-Garde designates a series of artistic movements that occurred in Europe during the first third of the twentieth century. The purpose was to radically renew literature and art, opening new paths and aesthetic forms. Most avant-garde movements reached their peak in Europe between the two world wars, primarily from 1914 through the 1920s and 1930s.

Key Features of the Avant-Garde

• Artistic Revolution: A break from traditional art, especially realism.
• Originality: A claim for absolute innovation.
• Experimentation: Constant research into new expressive techniques.
• Public Engagement: The removal of traditional public barriers.
• Short Duration: Movements often succeeded one another within a few years.
• Manifestos: Groups expressed their ideologies through formal manifestos.

Major Avant-Garde Movements

Futurism

• Mechanical Admiration: Focus on mechanical civilization and technical progress.
• Anti-Sentimentality: Disdain for human and sentimental elements.
• Linguistic Reform: Destruction of orthographic punctuation and syntax, and the suppression of adjectives.

While Futurism was a movement rich in theory, it produced limited literary results. Its major contribution was the incorporation of new topics into literature.

Cubism

• Decomposition: Based on the decomposition of reality, reconstructed freely through drawings and collage.
• Visual Arrangement: Importance of the typographical and visual-spatial arrangement of words.

Expressionism

• Internal Reality: Prioritizes internal realities over external ones.
• Spiritual Tension: The artist projects their spiritual tensions and tormented anxieties, creating a tragic vision of the world.
• Emotional Impact: Intended to produce a strong impression on the public's mind.

Dadaism

The most destructive form of modernism, Dadaism is based on the absolute negation of everything, including art and literature. It advocates for systematic doubt, ridicule, caustic humor, and rebellion against logic and common sense, creating incoherent speech that reflects the contradictions of life.

Surrealism

Surrealism seeks to renew art to change life. It aims to access a higher reality found in the depths of the human subconscious, freeing the individual from moral and social conventions.

• Automatic Writing: A method of dictating thought without control from reason, aesthetic concerns, or moral preoccupations.
• Themes: Frequent themes include the world of dreams and black humor.

The influence of Surrealism, particularly through automatic writing and the use of dream-like metaphors, has been of great importance to all subsequent literature.