Understanding Key Concepts in Contemporary Art

ABSTRACTION: A contemporary art movement that bases its aesthetic effect on pure color, pure form, and pure quality, with no figurative or imitative purpose of reality.
WATERCOLOR: Painting in which pigment is mixed with a water-soluble binder, usually gum arabic.
Still Life: A painting, usually of small size, that represents only inanimate objects: pieces of game, fruit baskets, flowers, pots, bread, and vegetables, etc.
CHIASCURO: A term that refers to the effects of light and shade in an artistic work, particularly when they are very contrasting.
LOCAL COLOR: Color without hue, defined in a very concrete manner.
Tone Color: The one that displays any of the variants in which sunlight breaks down or a mixture of two or more colors.
Primary Colors: The three simple and basic colors: red, yellow, and blue.
SECONDARY COLOR OR BINARY: The mix among themselves, 2a2, determines the secondary colors or binary: orange (red and yellow), green (blue and yellow), and purple (blue and red).
Complementary Colors: Those resulting from the mixture of primary and secondary colors.
WARM COLORS: Colors that spread light: red, yellow, etc.
COOL COLORS: Colors that absorb light: green and blue.
CHART HISTORY: One that represents a scene or outstanding historical episode or a character of historical relevance.
Genre Painting: A painting that cultivates a particular theme related to scenes of daily life, customs, etc., starring popular types.
FADE / SFUMATO: A pen stroke that softens the contours and profiles.
FIGURATIVE: Refers to figures representing the arts, composing realistic themes, symbols, etc., that are perfectly identifiable.
FRESCO: A painting technique using pigment dissolved in water that is applied on a surface previously coated with plaster. It dries very quickly and hardly allows corrections, unlike oil.
OIL: A procedure that uses a fat medium, usually linseed oil, to dissolve the pigments. Painting executed with this procedure.
PIGMENT: A finely ground substance, a component of paint added to the medium (aqueous, oily, acrylic, etc.) to give it its color or make it opaque.
TONE: The intensity of color.