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Art & Art History vocabulary · Movements & Periods

Avant-garde

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/ˌævɑːnˈɡɑːrd/nounCommon term

In art & art history, avant-garde means: Artists, works or ideas that are new and experimental and challenge accepted rules; the word is French for the front part of an army.

In Turkish: avangart, öncü

How it is used

Used as a noun (the Parisian avant-garde) and as an adjective (avant-garde art). It is mostly applied to modern movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Dada. It can sound positive (bold, original) or critical (deliberately difficult).

Example sentences

  1. In the 1910s, the Russian avant-garde experimented with pure geometric abstraction.

  2. The gallery was known for showing avant-garde work that no one else would touch.

Common collocations

  • avant-garde art
  • the Russian avant-garde
  • avant-garde movement
  • the historical avant-garde
  • modern artArt made roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, when artists broke with academic traditions and experimented with new styles, subjects and materials.
  • CubismAn art movement started around 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which broke objects into geometric shapes and showed them from several viewpoints at once.
  • SurrealismAn art and literary movement launched in Paris in 1924 by André Breton, which explored dreams, the unconscious and strange combinations of images.
  • art movementA group of artists who share similar ideas, aims or styles during a particular period, and the art they produce, such as Impressionism or Cubism.

More terms: Movements & Periods

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