Abstract - A 20th century style of painting in which non-representational lines, colors, shapes, and forms replace accurate visual depiction of objects, landscape, and figures. The subject is often stylized, blurred, repeated or broken down into basic forms so that it becomes unrecognizable. Intangible subjects such as thoughts, emotions, and time are often expressed in abstract art form.

Abstract Expressionism - In the late 1930s and early 1940s, around the outbreak of World War II, many Surrealists fled Europe and settled in New York. Their interest in unmediated expression to reach the absolute soon influenced a young generation of painters struggling to find a voice for American art. The new movement, which became known as Abstract Expressionism, was heavily indebted to the ideas of the European pioneers of abstraction.

Art Nouveau - A painting, printmaking, decorative design, and architectural style developed in England in the 1880s. Art Nouveau, primarily an ornamental style, was not only a protest against a sterile Realism, but against the whole drift toward industrialization and mechanization and the unnatural artifacts they produce. The style is characterized by the usage of sinuous, graceful, cursive lines, interlaced patterns, flower, plants, insects and other motifs inspired by nature.

Art Deco - Primarily a design style, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. In simplified terms, the Art Deco movement can be considered as the follow-up style on Art Nouveau - more simplified and closer to mass production. The Art Deco movement was dominant in fashion, furniture, jewelry, textiles, architecture, commercial printmaking and interior decoration. The Chrysler building in New York (1930) is an example of Art Deco style in architecture.

Cubism - An art style developed in 1908 by Picasso and Braque whereby the artist breaks down the natural forms of the subjects into geometric shapes and creates a new kind of pictorial space. In contrast to traditional painting styles where the perspective of subjects are fixed and complete, cubist work can portray the subject from multiple perspectives.

Dadaism - An art style founded by Hans Arp in Zurich after World War I which challenged the established canons of art, thoughts, morality, etc. Disgusted with the war and life in general, Dadaists expressed their feelings by creating "non-art." The term Dada, a nonsense or baby-talk term, symbolizes the loss of meaning in the European culture. Dada art is difficult to interpret since there is no common foundation. Since Dadaists claimed that they were not creating art, all objects (including found objects that are retrieved from waste bins and such) can be incorporated to create non-art.

Expressionism - An art movement of the early 20th century in which traditional adherence to realism and proportion are replaced by the artist's emotional connection to the subject. These paintings are often abstract, the subject matter distorted in color and form to emphasize and express the intense emotion of the artist.

Fauvism - The word Fauvism comes from the French word fauve, which means "wild animals". And indeed - this new modern art style was a bit wild - with strong and vivid colors. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh had carried Impressionism to its limits by using expressive colors. Fauvism went one step further in using simplified designs in combination with an "orgy of pure colors" as it was characterized by their critics. The best-known fauve artists are Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminch, Kees van Dongen and Raoul Dufy.

Futurism - Early 20th-century artistic movement that centered in Italy and emphasized the dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality, change, and restlessness of modern life in general.

Impressionism - An art movement founded in France in the last third of the 19th century. Impressionist artists sought to break up light into its component colors and render its ephemeral play on various objects. The artist's vision was intensely centered on light and the ways it transforms the visible world. This style of painting is characterized by short brush strokes of bright colors used to recreate visual impressions of the subject and to capture the light, climate and atmosphere of the subject at a specific moment in time. The chosen colors represent light which is broken down into its spectrum components and re-combined by the eyes into another color when viewed at a distance (an optical mixture). The term was first used in 1874 by a journalist ridiculing a landscape by Monet called Impression - Sunrise.

Minimalism - Painting and sculpture are reduced to the essential by the use of elementary and geometrical forms - "Primary Structure" - to reach the most extreme formalism in space. The work is the final outcome of a creative process determined in advance.

Pop Art - A style of art which seeks its inspiration from commercial art and items of mass culture (such as comic strips, popular foods and brand name packaging). Pop art was first developed in New York City in the late 1950s and soon became the dominant avant-garde art form in the United States.

Op Art - After Pop Art it was Op Art, a short form for Optical Art. Op Art expressed itself with reduced geometrical forms - sometimes in black and white contrasts and sometimes with very brilliant colors. In the seventies Op Art even made its way into fashion design. But Op Art never succeeded in becoming a really popular mass-movement of modern art like Pop Art.

Realism - A style of painting which depicts subject matter (form, color, space) as they appear in actuality or ordinary visual experience without distortion or stylization. Photorealism is a style that involves thorough (nearly photographic) detail.

Romanticism - An art style which emphasize the personal, emotional and dramatic through the use of exotic, literary, or historical subject matter.

Surrealism - An art style developed in Europe in the 1920s characterized by using the subconscious as a source of creativity to liberate pictorial subjects and ideas. Surrealist paintings often depict unexpected or irrational objects in an atmosphere of fantasy, creating a dreamlike scenario.

Symbolism - An art style developed in the late 19th century characterized by the incorporation of symbols and ideas, usually spiritual or mystical in nature, which represent the inner life of people. Traditional modeled, pictorial depictions are replaced or contrasted by flat mosaic-like surfaces decoratively embellished with figures and design elements.

Trompe l'oeil (Trick of the Eye) - A style of painting in which architectural details are rendered in extremely fine detail in order to create the illusion of tactile (tangible) and spatial qualities. This form of painting was first used by the Romans thousands of years ago in frescoes and murals. Trompe l'oeil can be thought of as a form of architectural realism.