Six hundred years, in order
The six movements as one continuous run of years: where each began, what turned, and what the next generation did about it. Read it top to bottom in about twenty minutes.
What changed, era by era
Dates are approximate on purpose: a way of painting rarely starts on a given morning. The order and the reasons are what matter.
Three things to notice
The eras overlap
Baroque painters were working while the Renaissance was still being taught, and Impressionists exhibited while academic painting was at its most polished. Movements are arguments held at the same time, not shifts at midnight.
Each turn answers the last
Impressionism answered the studio; Post-Impressionism answered Impressionism's limits; Cubism answered the single viewpoint; Surrealism answered the surface. Follow the reasons, not the labels.
Dates are not the work
A span of years tells you who could have seen what. It says nothing about quality. The movement pages carry the traits and the painters; the gallery carries the works.
Short answers
What came before the Renaissance?
Medieval painting: flat gold grounds, symbolic scale, and figures arranged by importance rather than by distance. The Renaissance is largely the story of painters learning to place people in believable space.
What happened after Surrealism?
Abstract Expressionism, Pop and everything since. khiar stops at Surrealism because the six movements here are the ones that build directly on each other; the reading page lists where to go next.
Why does the timeline stop at 1950?
Because after that the story splits into many parallel lines at once, and a single ordered timeline stops being an honest shape.
Read one era properly
The timeline gives you the shape. A movement page gives you the traits, the painters and the reason it mattered.
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