FEATURED ARTISTS
During the first half of the 20th century, Paris was home to many of the world's leading early modernists of the day. The impressionist movement of the late 1800’s found its start in France and provided the modernist legacy that French artists, centered around Paris, built upon throughout most of the early 20th century.
The modern “School of Paris” rose from the ashes of the decision by “the 1924 Salon des Indépendants to group artists by nation of origin, separating the works of French-born artists from those of immigrants.’ Today, the moniker “School of Paris” generally relates to all French and émigré artists associated with the Modernist movement, working in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.
A blistering succession of Modernist movements such as Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Pointillism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and others were championed by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Henry Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Jules Pascin, Jacques Lipchitz and André Breton.
Other countries and regions like Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria and Zurich are notably credited with founding and/or advancing numerous modern art movements of the early 20th century, including: Constructivism. Futurism, German Expressionism, Suprematism, Die Bruck and Der Blaue Reiter.
By the middle of the 20th century, American Modernists wrestled art supremacy away from France, as they made their ascension to world dominance of the pre war modern art market.
First and second generation American Abstract Expressionist artists like Willem de kooning, Jackson Pollock Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Richard Pousette-Dart, Mark Tobey, Lee Krasner, and others violently crashed the party.