Art Movements

Medieval and Proto-Renaissance

• Byzantine — c. 4th–15th century; flat, hierarchical compositions; gold backgrounds; elongated spiritual figures; icon tradition. Key artists: anonymous manuscript illuminators, mosaicists of Ravenna.
• Romanesque — c. 10th–12th century; heavy stone architecture; stylized, symbolic figures in relief carving and manuscript illumination; narrative biblical cycles. No single named painter; tradition largely anonymous.
• Gothic — c. 12th–14th century; pointed arches, flying buttresses, and stained glass in architecture; in painting, greater naturalism, gold ground panels, flowing drapery. Key artists: Cimabue, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini.
• International Gothic — c. late 14th–early 15th century; courtly elegance, decorative detail, sinuous line; spread across Europe. Key artists: Gentile da Fabriano, Limbourg Brothers (Très Riches Heures).
• Proto-Renaissance — c. late 13th–early 14th century; break from Byzantine flatness; naturalistic figures, spatial depth. Key artists: Giotto di Bondone (Scrovegni Chapel frescoes).

Renaissance

Early Renaissance (Quattrocento)

• Florentine Early Renaissance — c. 1400–1490; rediscovery of classical antiquity; linear perspective (Brunelleschi/Alberti); anatomical study. Key artists: Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Paolo Uccello, Donatello (sculpture).
• Flemish Early Renaissance (Early Netherlandish) — c. 1420–1500; oil paint technique perfected; minute realism, symbolic disguised iconography; no single linear-perspective tradition. Key artists: Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling.
• Quattrocento court painting — patronage by Italian courts; portraiture, mythological allegory. Key artists: Andrea Mantegna, Piero della Francesca.

High Renaissance

• High Renaissance — c. 1490–1527; idealized harmony, monumental figures, psychological depth; centered in Florence and Rome. Key artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael, Bramante (architecture).
• Venetian Renaissance — c. 1480–1580; emphasis on color (colorito) over drawing (disegno); rich atmospheric effects, loose brushwork. Key artists: Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese.
• German Renaissance — c. 1490–1550; fusion of Italian ideas with northern realism and printmaking tradition. Key artists: Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder.
• Northern Renaissance (Flemish/Dutch) — c. 1490–1560; moral allegory, landscape, grotesque fantasy. Key artists: Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Mannerism

• Mannerism (Manierismo) — c. 1520–1600; reaction against High Renaissance balance; elongated figures, ambiguous space, acidic color, virtuosic artifice. Key artists: Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Agnolo Bronzino, Parmigianino, El Greco (late period).

Baroque and Rococo

• Baroque — c. 1600–1750; dramatic light and shadow (chiaroscuro/tenebrism), dynamic composition, emotional intensity, grandeur; Counter-Reformation patronage. Key artists: Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Nicolas Poussin, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (sculpture/architecture).
• Dutch Golden Age — c. 1620–1680; secular patronage; genre scenes, portraiture, still life, landscape; distinct from Flemish Baroque. Key artists: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael.
• Flemish Baroque — c. 1610–1680; large-scale altarpieces, mythological subjects, opulent surfaces. Key artists: Rubens, van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens.
• Rococo — c. 1720–1780; lighter, pastel palette; playful, erotic, and pastoral subjects; frothy ornamental decoration; French and German courts. Key artists: Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Neoclassicism and Romanticism

• Neoclassicism — c. 1760–1830; revival of Greco-Roman forms and civic virtue themes; reaction against Rococo excess; linear clarity, cool palette. Key artists: Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Antonio Canova (sculpture), John Flaxman.
• Romanticism — c. 1800–1850; emotion over reason; the sublime, nature, nationalism, the exotic; loose brushwork, dramatic color. Key artists: Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Francisco Goya (late work), J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable.
• Hudson River School — c. 1825–1870; American landscape painting; sublime wilderness, luminous atmosphere, national identity. Key artists: Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt.
• Luminism — c. 1850–1875; American; serene, hazy light effects in landscape; closely related to Hudson River School. Key artists: Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade.
• Nazarenes — c. 1810–1840; German–Austrian group; revived medieval and Early Renaissance religious sincerity; fresco technique. Key artists: Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr.

19th-Century Realism and its Offshoots

• Realism — c. 1840–1880; ordinary people and rural/industrial labor depicted without idealization; political dimension. Key artists: Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier.
• Barbizon School — c. 1830–1870; French landscape painting from nature, precursor to Impressionism; woodland scenes around Fontainebleau. Key artists: Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny.
• Macchiaioli — c. 1850–1875 (Italy); Tuscan painters who used patches (macchie) of contrasting color and tone; rejected academic convention; influenced by Barbizon and parallel to Impressionism. Key artists: Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Telemaco Signorini.
• American Realism — c. 1870–1900; prosaic domestic and sporting subjects; influenced by Eakins’s anatomical rigor. Key artists: Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer.
• Aestheticism (Art for Art’s Sake) — c. 1860–1900 (Britain); art exists for its own beauty, free from moral or social purpose; decorative refinement; close ties with Symbolism and the Decadent movement. Key artists: James McNeill Whistler, Frederic Leighton, Albert Moore; literary champion: Walter Pater.
• Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — founded 1848 (London); intense color, detailed naturalism, literary/medieval subjects; named in opposition to Raphael’s “corrupting” influence. Key artists: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones (second wave).
• Tonalism — c. 1880–1915 (America); muted, unified tonal harmony, often nocturnal or misty landscapes; influenced by Whistler’s tonal arrangements. Key artists: George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, Dwight William Tryon, Thomas Wilmer Dewing.
• Orientalism — c. 1800–1900; European depictions of the Middle East and North Africa, often exoticizing; politically contested. Key artists: Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme, John Frederick Lewis.

Late 19th Century: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Impressionism

• Impressionism — c. 1860–1886; loose brushwork capturing transient light and atmosphere; outdoor painting (en plein air); rejected academic finish; named after Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872). Key artists: Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley.
• American Impressionism — c. 1880–1915; adapted French techniques to American subjects. Key artists: Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent (loosely).

Post-Impressionism

• Post-Impressionism — c. 1886–1910; umbrella for diverse reactions against Impressionism; seeking structure, expression, or symbolism beyond surface appearance. Key artists: Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat.
• Pointillism (Divisionism / Chromoluminarism) — c. 1886–1910; systematic application of pure color dots that blend optically; derived from color theory (Chevreul, Rood). Key artists: Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce.
• Cloisonnism — c. 1888; bold outlines enclosing flat areas of color, influenced by Japanese prints and stained glass. Key artists: Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin.
• Synthetism — c. 1888–1894; Gauguin and Pont-Aven group; simplification of form and color to convey inner feeling over visual appearance. Key artists: Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier.
• Nabis — c. 1888–1900; Post-Impressionist group; flattened pattern, intimist domestic subjects, influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. Key artists: Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier.
• Symbolism — c. 1880–1910; literary, mystical, and psychological imagery; interiority over external reality; paralleled Symbolist poetry. Key artists: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Fernand Khnopff, Arnold Böcklin, Félicien Rops.

Turn of the Century

• Art Nouveau — c. 1890–1910; sinuous organic line derived from plants; integrated fine and decorative arts; architecture, poster art, glasswork. Key artists: Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley; architects: Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí.
• Vienna Secession — founded 1897; Viennese breakaway from academic tradition; synthesis of fine and applied arts, symbolist and Art Nouveau elements. Key artists: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser.
• Glasgow School — c. 1890–1910; Scottish Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau synthesis. Key artists: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.
• Jugendstil — German and Scandinavian Art Nouveau equivalent; in magazine design and applied arts. Key artists: Franz von Stuck, Heinrich Vogeler.

Early 20th-Century Modernism

Fauvism and Expressionism

• Fauvism — c. 1904–1908; wild, non-naturalistic color applied directly from the tube; spontaneous brushwork; named “wild beasts” (fauves) by critic Louis Vauxcelles. Key artists: Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy.
• Die Brücke — founded 1905 (Dresden); German Expressionism; raw color, angular distortion, woodcut influence; urban alienation and anxiety. Key artists: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde.
• Der Blaue Reiter — founded 1911 (Munich); German Expressionism; spiritual abstraction, color theory, international membership. Key artists: Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee, Alexej von Jawlensky.
• Expressionism (broad) — c. 1905–1925; emotional distortion of form and color; response to industrialization and anxiety. Key artists: Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz.
• Norwegian Expressionism — Edvard Munch as proto-Expressionist precursor; The Scream (1893) emblematic.

Cubism and Related Movements

• Cubism — c. 1907–1922; founded by Picasso and Braque; multiple simultaneous viewpoints on a single canvas; fractured planes; divided into Analytic Cubism (1908–1912, monochromatic, fragmented) and Synthetic Cubism (from 1912, collage, brighter color). Key artists: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris.
• Orphism (Orphic Cubism) — c. 1912–1914; lyrical color added to Cubist structure; Robert Delaunay coined term; simultaneous color contrasts. Key artists: Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, František Kupka.
• Purism — c. 1918–1926; post-WWI response to Cubism; clean, geometric, machine-age forms; functional aesthetic. Key artists: Amédée Ozenfant, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret).
• Section d’Or (Golden Section) — c. 1912; loose Cubist-affiliated group interested in mathematical proportion. Key artists: Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

Futurism and Vorticism

• Futurism — founded 1909 (Italy); celebration of speed, technology, industry, and violence; rejection of the past; dynamic simultaneous motion. Key artists: Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla; founder-manifesto: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
• Vorticism — c. 1914–1915 (Britain); sharp angles, mechanical energy; influenced by Cubism and Futurism; anti-pastoral. Key artists: Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, Christopher Nevinson; journal: BLAST.

Russian Avant-Garde

• Rayonism — c. 1912–1914; rays of light depicted as intersecting lines between objects. Key artists: Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova.
• Suprematism — c. 1915–1925; pure geometric abstraction (squares, circles, crosses) on white; art reduced to sensation. Key artist: Kazimir Malevich (Black Square, 1915).
• Constructivism — c. 1913–1934; art in service of revolutionary social purpose; industrial materials, typography, design. Key artists: Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy (Hungary/Germany).

De Stijl and Bauhaus

• De Stijl — founded 1917 (Netherlands); pure abstraction limited to primary colors plus black and white; horizontal-vertical grid only; integration of art and architecture. Key artists: Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg; architect: Gerrit Rietveld (Red Blue Chair).
• Bauhaus — 1919–1933 (Weimar, Dessau, Berlin); school uniting fine art, craft, and industrial design; highly influential on design education. Key artists/teachers: Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Dada and Surrealism

• Dada — c. 1916–1924; founded Zurich 1916 (Cabaret Voltaire); anti-war, anti-bourgeois nihilism; chance operations, readymades, nonsense. Key artists: Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Hannah Höch (photomontage), Man Ray; New York branch: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia.
• Merz — Kurt Schwitters’s personal Dada-adjacent collage practice; assemblage of found materials.
• Surrealism — c. 1924–1945; founded by André Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924); tapping the unconscious, dream imagery, automatic writing and drawing; two tendencies: illusionistic (photographic precision depicting impossible scenes) vs. automatist (spontaneous mark-making). Key artists: Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Giorgio de Chirico (proto-Surrealist), Frida Kahlo (loosely affiliated), Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning.

Mid-20th Century Modernism

• Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) — c. 1920–1933 (Germany); critical realism in reaction to Expressionism; sharp social commentary. Key artists: Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad.
• Magic Realism (visual) — c. 1925–1950; hyper-detailed, ordinary objects rendered with uncanny precision and subtle mystery; distinct from Latin American literary magic realism. Key artists: Franz Radziwill, Carlo Carrà (later period), Carel Willink.
• Social Realism — c. 1920s–1950s (international); art depicting hardship of the working class and oppressed; politically engaged but not doctrinally Soviet; distinct from Soviet Socialist Realism. Key artists: Ben Shahn, Reginald Marsh, Diego Rivera (overlap with Muralism), Käthe Kollwitz.
• Mexican Muralism — c. 1920–1940; large-scale public fresco programs commissioned after the Mexican Revolution; nationalist, socialist, and indigenous themes. Key artists: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros (the “Three Great Ones”).
• Harlem Renaissance (visual art) — c. 1920–1940 (New York); African-American cultural and artistic flowering centered in Harlem; dignified portraiture, African-American history, and folk themes. Key artists: Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage (sculpture), Charles White.
• Regionalism — c. 1930–1945 (America); celebration of rural Midwestern life and landscapes; accessible, vernacular style; often contrasted with urban Modernism. Key artists: Grant Wood (American Gothic, 1930), Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry.
• Precisionism — c. 1920–1940 (America); crisp, simplified depictions of American industrial and architectural subjects; geometric clarity influenced by Cubism; also called Cubist Realism. Key artists: Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth (I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928), Georgia O’Keeffe (overlap).
• Synchromism — c. 1913–1918; American movement using color rhythms analogous to musical structure; one of the first American abstract movements; closely related to Orphism. Key artists: Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald-Wright.
• Abstract Expressionism — c. 1943–1960 (New York School); first major American avant-garde movement; split into Action Painting (gestural, process-oriented) and Color Field (large areas of pure color, meditative). Key artists: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline (action); Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Clyfford Still (color field).
• Art Informel / Tachisme — c. 1940s–1960s (European counterpart to AbEx); gestural abstraction, spontaneous mark-making. Key artists: Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu, Wols.
• Art Brut — c. 1945 onward; Dubuffet’s term for work by self-taught, psychiatric, and outsider artists untouched by cultural training. Key champion: Jean Dubuffet.
• CoBrA — 1948–1951 (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam); spontaneous, figurative-expressionist; childlike imagery. Key artists: Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky.
• Lyrical Abstraction — c. 1945–1965; European gestural abstraction, poetic and intuitive. Key artists: Nicolas de Staël, Serge Poliakoff.

Post-War Figuration and Reaction

• Bay Area Figurative Movement — c. 1950–1965; California painters who returned to the figure while retaining AbEx brushwork. Key artists: David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn.
• Kitchen Sink School — c. 1950s (Britain); gritty realist depiction of working-class domestic life. Key artists: John Bratby, Jack Smith, Derrick Greaves.
• Neue Wilde (Neo-Expressionism, Germany) — c. 1980s; but its roots in postwar German figurative painting trace to earlier; see also Neo-Expressionism below.
• Lucian Freud / Francis Bacon tradition — post-war London figurative painting; psychological rawness; School of London loosely groups Freud, Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj.

Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art

• Pop Art — c. 1956–1970; imagery borrowed from mass media, advertising, and consumer culture; irony and flatness; emerged independently in Britain and the USA. Key artists: Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi (British); Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg (American).
• Neo-Dada — c. 1955–1965; revived Dadaist tactics (chance, found objects, performance) in a post-war consumer context; bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Key artists: Robert Rauschenberg (Combines), Jasper Johns, John Cage (music), Merce Cunningham (dance).
• Fluxus — c. 1960–1975; intermedia events, performance, and anti-commercial attitude; influenced by John Cage and Dada. Key artists: George Maciunas (founder), Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik.
• Body Art — c. 1960s–present; artist’s body as both medium and subject; often transgressive or endurance-based; overlaps with Performance Art. Key artists: Vito Acconci (Seedbed, 1972), Chris Burden (Shoot, 1971), Carolee Schneemann, Gina Pane.
• Happenings — c. 1959–1965; participatory live art events; precursor to performance art. Key artist: Allan Kaprow.
• Minimalism — c. 1960–1975; reduced geometric forms; industrial fabrication; rejection of personal touch and illusion; emphasis on literal object and viewer’s space. Key artists: Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Frank Stella (early).
• Op Art (Optical Art) — c. 1960–1970; geometric patterns creating optical illusions of movement. Key artists: Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley.
• Kinetic Art — sculpture with actual or apparent movement; related to Op Art. Key artists: Alexander Calder (mobiles), Jean Tinguely.
• Land Art (Earth Art) — c. late 1960s–present; art created in and from the landscape; often monumental and remote. Key artists: Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty, 1970), Michael Heizer, Walter De Maria, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy.
• Conceptual Art — c. 1965–1975; the idea is the work; execution and materials are secondary; dematerialization of the art object. Key artists: Sol LeWitt, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Art & Language group.
• Process Art — c. late 1960s; emphasis on making/process rather than finished product; gravity, entropy, and chance are materials. Key artists: Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris.
• Arte Povera — c. 1967–1972 (Italy); use of humble, everyday materials; interrogating industrial and consumer values. Key artists: Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giovanni Anselmo.
• Performance Art — c. 1960s–present; live, time-based work; body as medium. Key artists: Marina Abramović, Yoko Ono, Chris Burden, Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci.
• Video Art — c. 1965–present; video as artistic medium; Nam June Paik a pioneer. Key artists: Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, Gary Hill.
• Institutional Critique — c. 1969–present; interrogating the museum and gallery system. Key artists: Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser.

Late 20th-Century Movements

• Photorealism — c. 1968–1985; paintings that replicate photographic images with technical precision; often depicting commercial Americana. Key artists: Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Audrey Flack.
• Hyperrealism — post-1970s European/American evolution of photorealism; even greater illusionistic detail. Key artists: Gottfried Helnwein, Ron Mueck (sculpture).
• Neo-Expressionism — c. 1980–1990; return to gestural figurative painting; raw, mythological, and autobiographical content. Key artists: Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, A.R. Penck, Markus Lüpertz (German); Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Eric Fischl (American); Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi (Italian Transavanguardia).
• Hard-Edge Painting — c. 1959–1970; flat, precisely bounded areas of color with no painterly brushwork; distinct from Minimalism by its coloristic emphasis. Key artists: Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Al Held, Frank Stella (mid-period); term coined by critic Jules Langsner.
• Postmodernism in art — c. 1970–present; skepticism toward grand narratives and originality; appropriation, pastiche, irony, deconstruction. Key artists: Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince.
• Pictures Generation — c. 1977–1986 (New York); artists using appropriated mass-media imagery to critique representation and commodity culture; emerged from a 1977 group show titled “Pictures.” Key artists: Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Barbara Kruger.
• Appropriation Art — c. 1977–present; using pre-existing images as primary material; questions authorship and originality. Key artists: Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman.
• Feminist Art — c. 1970–present; addressing gendered representation, craft traditions, and female experience. Key artists: Judy Chicago (The Dinner Party, 1979), Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, Kara Walker, Adrian Piper.
• Graffiti / Street Art (early) — c. 1970s–1980s; New York subway writing culture; tags and murals in public space. Key artists: Jean-Michel Basquiat (SAMO), Keith Haring, Futura 2000, Lee Quiñones.
• East Village Scene — c. 1981–1987 (New York); raw, cheap, accessible gallery spaces; crossover with music and graffiti. Key artists: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf.

Contemporary and 21st-Century Practices

• Street Art / Urban Art — c. 1990s–present; stencils, paste-ups, and murals in public space; global phenomenon; ranges from guerrilla commentary to commissioned murals. Key artists: Banksy, Shepard Fairey (OBEY), Os Gemeos, Invader, JR.
• Düsseldorf School of Photography — c. 1976–present; large-format, deadpan, typological photography emerging from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Bernd and Hilla Becher; systematic documentation of industrial structures. Key artists: Bernd and Hilla Becher (founders), Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer.
• YBAs (Young British Artists) — c. 1988–2000s; provocative, conceptual, media-savvy; associated with dealer Charles Saatchi and Goldsmiths College. Key artists: Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Sarah Lucas.
• New Leipzig School — c. 2000s (Germany); figurative painting revived in Leipzig; painterly craft combined with conceptual edge. Key artists: Neo Rauch, Tim Eitel.
• Digital Art / Net Art — c. 1990s–present; art made with or distributed via digital technology; includes generative, browser-based, and AI-assisted work. Key artists: Hito Steyerl, Casey Reas, Rafael Rozendaal; early net art: JODI.
• NFT Art — c. 2021–present; blockchain-authenticated digital art; high-profile sales (Everydays by Beeple, 2021). Key artists: Beeple, Pak, XCopy.
• Relational Aesthetics — c. 1990s; art as social interaction and situation rather than object; theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud. Key artists: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liam Gillick, Philippe Parreno.
• Afrofuturism (visual art strand) — c. 1990s–present; Black speculative imagination, sci-fi, and diasporic history combined in visual culture. Key artists: Kehinde Wiley, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu.
• Post-Internet Art — c. 2008–present; art made in and for an environment saturated with internet images; slick surfaces, digital aesthetics in physical media. Key artists: Artie Vierkant, Harm van den Dorpel, Petra Cortright.