Modern painting

The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century witnessed the essential changes for the development of modern art. The development of the newest technologies led to the loss of its previous strong-hold positions and had to change its structure and contents. As a matter of fact, traditional art had to compete with the newest high-tech.
This epoch saw the emergence of several painting trends that had never appeared before. The most important of them are Cubism, Abstractionism and Modernism (Fauvism). Three of them were later divided into different sub-genres which will be viewed in three subsequent chapters.
The founder of Modernism was Henri Matisse. At his time, he revolutionized Paris with "wild", multi-coloured, expressive landscapes and figure paintings. It was an absolutely new painting style with intense warm colours against the blue-green background.
Modernism had no concrete theories and was very short lived, starting with 1905 and ending in 1907. Matisse was seen the leader of the movement which lasted for very little. He was delighted with intense warm colours and rhythmical succession of dancing nudes (nudism was rather popular at that time).
Still, Modernism expressed the fatality and predeterminacy of the human being that was confirmed in the course of the World War Second.