What is Avant-Garde art?

French for ‘advanced guard’, Avant-Garde was a term originally associated with the army. It was first applied to art in France in the early 19th century, with Avant-Garde design breaking the traditional rules within art and championing experimentation. In 1825, French social reformer Henri de Saint-Simon wrote of the style, ‘We artists will serve you as an avant-garde, the power of the arts is most immediate: when we want to spread new ideas we inscribe them on marble or canvas.’

Some Avant-Garde movements like Cubism focused on innovation in form, while others such as Surrealism provided social commentary. What united Avant-Garde artists was a desire to rewrite the rules and explore new ways of creating and thinking — art was no longer just a tool for representation, but a way to explore thought, emotion and imagination.

Man Ray brought innovation to photography by capturing surreal, dreamlike images without a camera lens, and Wassily Kandinsky created abstract paintings that used shapes, lines and colour to express emotions. Jean Arp embraced spontaneity to make sculptures more intuitively rather than through rigid design, and Max Ernst developed inventive techniques like frottage, where paper was placed over a textured material to create chance effects. Marcel Duchamp even questioned what the role of art was, by reimagining everyday objects as art, with pieces such as Fountain and Bicycle Wheel.

Due to its radical nature in challenging existing processes and norms, Avant-Garde art has often been met with resistance, though continues to be an influential artistic form today.

What are the characteristics of Avant-Garde art?

The Avant-Garde style was defined by innovation, experimentation and a rejection of tradition. Instead of following artistic norms, artists within this movement developed unconventional techniques and used new materials, pushing the boundaries of what was possible.

Avant-Garde artworks asked social and philosophical questions, prioritising emotional expression and challenging the very notion of what art could be.