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A style of early 20th-century painting in which depicted scenes or objects are reduced or simplified to elemental structural forms and rendered by a combination of abstractionism and realism
Precisionism was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period.
The term itself was first coined in the early 1920s.
Origin
It had its origins in Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism; in turn it influenced Pop art. Influenced strongly by Cubism and Futurism, its main themes included industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape, which were depicted in precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms.
Reverence for Industrial Age
There is a degree of reverence for the industrial age in the movement, but social commentary was not fundamental to the style. The degree of abstraction in the movement ranged considerably.
Precisionists
Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and Georgia O'Keeffe were prominent Precisionists. George Ault was also associated with Precisionism, although his association is less clear. The movement had no presence outside the United States, and although no manifesto was ever created, the artists themselves were a close group who were active throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and exhibited together.
Georgia O'Keeffe, however, remained connected to Precisionist ideals until the 1960s, although her best-known works are not closely related to Precisionism. Her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, was a highly regarded mentor for the group.
Precisionist artists have also been referred to as "Cubist-Realists", "Sterilists", and "Immaculates". Their art would have an influence on the magic realism and pop art movements.
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