This special interest day will explain how, in the 20th and 21st centuries, society changed more than in the previous several hundred years.  So has art.   

From as early as 1905, Matisse and Picasso created some of their most important and influential works, Mondrian and others developed abstraction, and Duchamp produced art which still has an influence on artists today. 

In the second and third decades of the century, the artistic response to political and social upheavals produced some of the great masterpieces of modern art, including many works, such as those of Dada and the Surrealists, which were designed deliberately to shock and mystify.  In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War was a great influence on artists such as Picasso and Dalí, whilst the deep pessimism of the years following the Second World War is reflected in the work of artists like Bacon and Dubuffet.  

Abstract Expressionism initially dominated the post-WW2 period, while Pop Art, which started here in the fifties, brought a return to optimism in the UK and USA in the sixties, although some of Warhol’s pictures reveal a darker side of modern life.

The last decades of the twentieth century saw an intense questioning of the nature and language of art, and serious consideration of ecological issues and the state of the planet amongst artists like Beuys and Kiefer.  In the context of British art, we shall look at the Turner Prize which, since 1984, has helped bring this country to the forefront of international modern art.

The 21st century saw the opening of Tate Modern and the widening of scope of international art collections beyond the previous concentration on Western European and North American art.