The 15 artistic trends that a designer should know

When you dedicate yourself to the world of design and creativity in general, you should know that inspiration can come from anywhere, especially from artistic currents. Therefore, these are fifteen artistic currents that you should know if you work in this sector.

artistic currents

Like the 15 names every designer should know, there are certain art and design movements that creatives should be familiar with. Whether these artistic currents are 30 or 150 years old, the impact of many of them continues to have influence today, even unconsciously. Let's see a fairly representative list of them.

1. impressionism / post-impressionism

Claude Monet | The Ice Floes (Les Glaçons)
Developed primarily in France in the late 19th century, Impressionism was an artistic movement in which a small group of painters eschewed traditional emphasis on historical or mythological themes and began to paint elements of reality, particularly the transitory nature of light. , color and texture.

2. arts and crafts

William Morris | Tulip and Wilow Textile
Reacting to the increase in mass production and the corresponding decline in craftsmanship during the Industrial Revolution, there was a resurgence of interest in the decorative arts throughout Europe during the second half of the 19th century, known as the Arts and Crafts movement.

3. art nouveau

Alphonse Mucha | Sarah Bernhardt
After the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau was a mainly ornamental movement that developed in Europe and the United States. A distinctive characteristic of this trend is the use of asymmetric and organic lines, instead of solid and uniform shapes, applied in architecture, interiors and jewelry, as well as in posters and illustrations.

4. Cubism

Pablo Picasso | Guernica
Unlike the expressive attempts to capture natural conditions of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Cubism dealt with flat, two-dimensional and distorted objects, sacrificing precise perspective in favor of surreal fragmentation, with the aim of representing the object from different perspectives.

5. futurism

Tullio Crali | The Strength of the Curve
Founded in Italy in the early 20th century, Futurism sought to capture the rhythm, vitality and speed of modern life, in highly expressive works of art that ultimately glorified war, fascism and the machine age. The aesthetic style would later spread throughout Europe, and especially in Russia.

6. constructivism

Alexander Rodchenko | Trade Union is a Defender of Female Labor
Influenced by both Cubism and Futurism, Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement started in 1920, by the Soviet painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin, co-author of the so-called “Realistic Manifesto”, together with the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo.

7. bauhaus

Herbert Bayer | Chromatic Twist
Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the enormously influential Bauhaus school of design, architecture and applied arts existed in Germany from 1919 to 1933, when it was closed by the Nazi regime.

8. art deco

Edward McKnight Kauffer | American Airlines Travel Poster, Ireland
It was an important international movement in Western Europe and the US. Art Deco takes many references from Art Nouveau, as well as elements from Bauhaus and Cubism. It originated in Paris, where the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries gave it its name.

9. surrealism

Salvador Dali | The Great Masturbator
Like Art Deco, Surrealism flourished in what is known as the interwar period. It emerged from the Dada 'anti art' movement at the beginning of the 20th century, but instead of satire, absurdity, a negative reaction to the horror and futility of war, which were the most characteristic themes of Dadaism, Surrealism brought an expression much more positive creative.

10. abstract expressionism

Jackson Pollock | Alchemy
Beginning in the 1940s, the Abstract Expressionism movement fueled the development of modern art as we would know it over the following decade. New York was the epicenter and prominent artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko led this movement.

11. international typographic style

Josef Müller-Brockmann
After World War II, graphic designers in Switzerland and Germany developed a cohesive and unified modernist movement that became known as Swiss Design, or as the International Typographic Style. Based on the rational approach of the Bauhaus, this movement, still accepted by many graphic designers, is based on functionality and universality.

12. pop art

Andy Warhol | Michael Jackson
It was primarily a British and American cultural phenomenon that gained popularity in the late 1950s and 1960s. Pop Art was named by art critic Lawrence Alloway for the way it praised popular culture and elevated common objects, often unremarkable, to iconic status, such as soup cans, road signs and/or hamburgers.

13. minimalism

Frank Stella | Quathlamba I
It is a movement characterized by the extreme simplicity of form and a very literal and objective approach. Minimalism originated in New York in the late 1960s, driven by dissatisfaction with the messy, spontaneous subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism.

14. postmodernism

April Greiman | spotlight
Postmodernism was a reaction against the attitude of Modernism. Instead of idealism and reason, skeptical currents of thought gained strength, which were suspicious of the principles that society had assumed and denied the possibility of establishing universal truths that could describe the world around them. Postmodern artists defended individual experience and interpretation, against the apparent clarity of abstract principles. As a result, they generated multidimensional and often contradictory thinking.

15. memphis

Memphis Group
Drawing on many of the tenets of Postmodernism, Memphis's design aesthetic challenged the neutral, spare, and functional modernism that preceded it. With its roots in furniture design, the Memphis Group collective was founded by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass in the 1980s, but was only successful for six years.