Art Paintings - Buy Art

Many people are interested in fine art paintings and galleries in the world’s major cities are proud to collect and show the art of famous painters. But art painting started as far back as the Stone Age where the people of the time painted on the walls of caves using the pigments available to them which were the natural clays and ochre of the area. There are wonderful examples of these to be seen in the caves of Lascaux in France and the aboriginal line art drawings and paintings in Australia.

Art subjects

During the Middle Ages art was highly influenced by the fear of God and the church. The hierarchy of the church were the people with money and the ones who commissioned paintings therefore, the subject matter usually reflected this and bore little resemblance to what was actually happening in the lives of the people. Art usually depicted the Saints and the Heavens in glorious color.

From the fourteenth century artists began to realise the importance of man in the world and paintings began to be more realistic in their use of space and perspective and their subjects became less ethereal and more human. The story of Christianity was still being told but from the viewpoint of man rather than God. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo are the artists that are best known from this Renaissance period but there are many other artists from this time that belong with them.

In the middle of the 1800’s a group of young English artists set up a group that became known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They were essentially protesting at what they saw as the appalling and decadent state of English painting and they sought to return to the true and sincere nature of art from the likes of Botticelli. Mimicking the style of the masters of the Italian Renaissance their paintings often made social comments and moralised on the state of humanity as they saw it. They depicted religious, literary and historical themes and also showed highly detailed and richly colored textural flowers and fabrics that later became associated with the arts and craft movement. Edward Burne-Jones, William Holmen Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti are all associated with this period.

From the turn of the twentieth century art started to lose all its inhibitions and different movements became the norm. The last couple of years at the end of the eighteen hundreds saw the start of the Art Nouveau movement which relied on form and function as its motto and was highly influenced by the organic form.

Germany 1905 saw the start of the Expressionist Movement this movement relied on interpreting the feelings and emotions of the artist through visual art. The work was exciting and manic with strong brushwork and colors that owed nothing to nature. It was dramatic, vital work which expressed all the emotions of the artist. Vincent van Gogh was an inspiration to many of the artists of this period with his extraordinary use of color and vigorous technique in his beautiful paintings.

Later influences

Bauhaus originated in Germany in the 1920’s and influenced everything from architecture to art. It aspired to bring art and design into everyday daily life and to make it practical and affordable. Walter Gropius was at the centre of the Bauhaus ideal, he believed that all craftspeople should work together to produce refined, simple and geometric work. Kandinsky, Klee and Moholy Nagy were proponents of the Bauhaus movement until it was dissolved by the Nazi party on the grounds that it was a centre for Communist intellectuals.

The 1960’s saw the birth of Conceptual art where the idea or concept behind the piece of work was more important than the skill of the artist in producing it. It was manifested using many different media, film, video, photographs, performance, abstract art and site specific work. Installation Art may use the landscape as the medium adding to it or taking something away. Andy Goldsworthy often produces ephemeral art within the landscape which does not last beyond a day or two sometimes even less. The pieces are photographed and look like regular art paintings and are offered to the viewing public in book form but you can also buy art online or in person, when you can examine an art print or fine art print of famous art works, at most good galleries.