Postcard Prints: Avant-Garde Movement

The Avant-garde Movement is written as period of cultural innovation from the norm and a pushing of boundaries in subjects affecting society including art and politics. The term, avant-garde, is a French term translated in English as advance guard or vanguard. The vanguard refers to a group of soldiers who were usually sent ahead of a larger troop in battle to scout for danger. The Avant-garde movement was also considered to be the hallmark of the Modernist movement although this movement is characterized as having more of a political or social reformist feel that opposed the mainstream culture brought on by the industrial revolution.

Some of the artists and works associated with this movement are more famous than others due to postcard printing and commercial reproduction. Today, museums and print shops continue to print postcards and still consider them as best sellers. Below are some famously printed artists of the Avant-garde Movement:

• Gustav Klimt– Gustav Klimt is an Austrian painter considered to be the founding member of the Viennese Sezession School of Painting in 1897. This school of painting broke from the academic traditions of 19th century European mural painting in favor of the more highly-decorative, sinuous and organic forms of the Art Nouveau style. Klimt expressed this style in his paintings using bold, flat, precisely linear and highly decorative patterns of color and gold leaf. Some of Klimt’s most famous postcard prints include; The Kiss, 1907 and The Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze, 1909.

• Pablo Picasso- Pablo Picasso, famous Spanish expatriate painter, was the leading proponent of the Cubist Movement together with Georges Braque. Picasso’s style viewed art in various dimensions and merged space, lines, forms into a geometric representation of human figures and still life rather than trying to convey them as real. Some of his most famous postcard prints include; Three Musicians, 1921 and Girl before a Mirror, 1938.