Art Between the World Wars
Lecture by Ivy C. Dally
South Suburban College, South Holland, IL
Art in Europe
The Aftermath of World War I

World War I devastated Europe.

The promises made by the three
revolutions of the 19th century
brought about death and
disillusionment.

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
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Nationalism=war mongering
Industry=new, destructive weapons
Science/Enlightenment=no rationality
to be found.
Art world sought to undermine the
forces at work that caused the war
and turn inwards to the mind.
Raoul Hasmann, Mechanical Head (Spirit of the Age), 1920.
Dada

Only art movement that arose during
WWI that protested the status quo.
Founded in Switzerland.

Dada was anti-art, anti-politicians,
anti-war, anti-social graces. They were
provocative, absurd, their works
strange.

The content behind the art was often
more important than the form.

The term “Dada” chosen at random
from a dictionary.
Max Ernst, Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale,
1924
Marcel
du Champ,
Fountain,
ceramic compound, 1917.
Surrealism

Launched as a type of writing…the visual
arts were an afterthought.

Influenced by the theories of Freud;
sought to understand the subconscious
and dreams. Anti-rational.

Surrealism, according to its founder
Breton, “is intended to express, either
verbally , or in writing, or in any other
way, the true function of thought.
Thought expressed in the absence of
any control exerted by reason, and
outside all moral and aesthetic
considerations.”

Three main branches: automatic,
representational, and objects.
Rene Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938.
Joan Miro, Composition, 1933.
Dali, The Persistence of Memory, oil on canvas, 1931.
Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937.
Geometric Abstraction

An early type of nonrepresentational art that
focuses on form and color.

Geometric abstraction
appears in several parts of
Europe under different
names. In Russia is it known
as Supremetism or
Constructivism; in Holland it
is DeStijl. In Architecture it is
called the International Style.

The natural by-product of
cubism.
Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House,
1924.
Mondrian, Trafalgar Square,
oil on canvas, 1939-1943
Kazimir Malevich,
Suprematist Composition:
Airplane Flying, 1915.
Art in the Americas:
Spiritual Yearnings, Identity, and the Failure of the Modern World
The United States After WWI

Unlike Europe, the US
experienced an economic boom
following the war. “The Roaring
Twenties”.

Artists either embraced
modernity or criticized it. Some
sought spirituality, others looking
to find themselves.

The economic boom ended in
1929 with the onset of the Great
Depression.
Dorthea Lange, Migrant Mother,
California. 1936.
Georgia O’Keefe, Black Iris III, 1926.
Grant Wood, American Gothic,
1930.
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration of Negro Series, Number 58: In the
North the Negro had Better Educational Facilites, 1940-1941.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1941.
Mexican Social Realism and Modernism

Mexican Social Realists abandoned the
avant garde ideas of art in Europe.
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Works were meant to communicate
political ideals, social welfare, and
current issues to the masses.

Inspired by the art of the Italian
Renaissance and Pre-Columbian art
forms.

Frido Kahlo, a modern Mexican artist,
also looked to native arts for
inspiration, though she is known today
as a Surrealist.
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait.
War Threatens:
Europe is Devastated Again
Works leading up to World War 2
Pablo Picasso, Guernica. Oil on Canvas, 1937. (Parts may also have been
worked on by his lover Dora Maar.)
Newspaper photo the day after the bombings.
The town was all but wiped from the map.
Viewers admiring
Picasso’s work, which
was kept on display at
MOMA until the death
of General Franco (and
then a few more
years…MOMA didn’t
want to give up the
most famous work in
their collection.
In the wake of WW2 artists fled Europe to the
United States. The story of contemporary art
begins in New York in 1945.
Thank You for a Wonderful Semester!