Jebel Irhoud (Morocco)
The oldest known remains of Homo sapiens. Human history begins in Africa.
Comparative timeline
Art history from around the world next to the history of each society that made it possible, on a single time axis. Each column is a society: expand it to see its art and what was happening to it; the others fold away, but their dots still mark what was going on at the same time.
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Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
Art · Society · History on Wikipedia ↗
- Deep time to 10,000 BCE
- about 300,000 years ago
Society - about 75,000 years ago
Image: Vincent Mourre / Inrap · CC BY-SA 3.0 Engraved ochre from Blombos Cave (South Africa)
Cross-hatched lines engraved on ochre, among the oldest known graphic signs.
- about 51,200 years ago
Art Leang Karampuang (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
A scene with human figures and a wild pig; currently the oldest dated figurative painting.
- c. 20,000–15,000 BCE
Society The first humans reach the Americas
Groups from Asia enter the continent and within a few thousand years reach its southern tip.
- about 17,000 years ago
Art Lascaux Cave (France)
Horses, aurochs and deer painted on the cave walls.
- Villages, cities and states 10,000 BCE–500 CE
- c. 9500 BCE
Art Göbekli Tepe (Türkiye)
Large stone pillars carved with animals, raised by hunter-gatherer groups.
- c. 9500 BCE
Image: Sémhur derivative work: Rafy · CC BY-SA 3.0 First crops in the Fertile Crescent
Wheat and barley domesticated in south-west Asia. Farming will arise separately in China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, the Sahel and New Guinea.
- from about 10,000 years ago
Art Tassili n'Ajjer (Algeria)
Thousands of paintings and engravings recording a green Sahara, with wildlife, herders and everyday life.
- c. 3200 BCE
Society Writing in Mesopotamia
Tablets from Uruk record accounts and tribute. Egypt, China and Mesoamerica will invent their own scripts.
- c. 3100 BCE
Society Unification of Egypt
Upper and Lower Egypt unite under one king, starting a state that lasts almost three thousand years.
- c. 2600 BCE
Glossary Hieratism
Rigid, frontal, solemn figures that show no emotion, presenting gods and pharaohs as eternal beings. It appears in Egypt and returns in Byzantine and Romanesque art.
- c. 2600 BCE (Ur)
Glossary Mosaic
An image made of small pieces of stone, shell, glass or ceramic. The Sumerians already use it in the Standard of Ur; Rome, Byzantium and Islam develop it further.
- c. 2600–1900 BCE
Image: Avantiputra7 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Cities of the Indus Valley
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have planned streets, drains and standard weights, with no great palaces.
- c. 1754 BCE
Society Code of Hammurabi
The king of Babylon carves a law code in stone, with punishments that vary by social class.
- c. 1600 BCE (Crete)
Glossary Fresco painting
Painting on wet plaster: the colour becomes part of the wall as it dries. Used in Crete, Rome, the Ajanta caves and, above all, the Renaissance.
- c. 1600–1046 BCE
Society Shang dynasty
The first Chinese state with surviving writing, on oracle bones, and a large output of ritual bronzes.
- c. 1200–900 BCE
Art Olmec colossal heads (San Lorenzo, Mexico)
Monumental portraits carved in basalt, up to three metres tall.
- c. 1200 BCE
Image: Alexikoua · CC BY-SA 3.0 Late Bronze Age collapse
The Hittites, Mycenae and many eastern Mediterranean cities fall almost at once.
- 11th–9th century BCE
Society Phoenician expansion
The Phoenicians found colonies across the Mediterranean and spread an alphabet from which Greek and Latin derive.
- c. 900 BCE–1st century CE
Art Nok terracottas (Nigeria)
Fired clay human figures, the oldest known figurative sculpture south of the Sahara.
- c. 600 BCE
Glossary Doric order
The plainest Greek order: a column without a base, a fluted shaft and a plain capital. It is the order of the Parthenon.
- c. 560 BCE (Ionia)
Glossary Ionic order
Born in Ionia, on the coast of present-day Turkey. A slimmer column with a base and a capital of spiral volutes.
- 539 BCE
Image: Cattette · CC BY 4.0 Cyrus takes Babylon
The Persian Empire, the largest yet seen, is born and respects local religions.
- 508 BCE
Image: Philipp Foltz · Public domain Democracy in Athens
Cleisthenes gives a voice to free male citizens; women, foreigners and enslaved people remain excluded.
- c. 500 BCE (Nok)
Glossary Terracotta
Fired clay used for sculpture. The Nok heads in today’s Nigeria are among the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa; the Xi’an army is terracotta too.
- c. 480–323 BCE
Art Classical Greek art
Temples built on measured proportions, such as the Parthenon, and sculpture seeking an idealised human body.
- c. 480 BCE
Glossary Contrapposto
A pose with the weight on one leg and shoulders and hips tilting in opposite directions. It gives the statue life and movement.
- c. 440 BCE (Polykleitos)
Glossary Canon
A rule of proportions for depicting the ideal body. Polykleitos sets one in the Doryphoros; Egypt, India and China have their own canons.
- c. 430 BCE
Glossary Corinthian order
The most ornate order, with an acanthus-leaf capital. Rome makes it its favourite.
- 4th century BCE
Glossary Mimesis
Imitation of nature. Plato distrusts it as a copy of a copy; Aristotle sees it as a way of knowing. It guides European art until the 19th century.
- c. 268–232 BCE
Image: Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand · CC BY 2.0 Reign of Ashoka
The Maurya emperor renounces war after Kalinga, adopts Buddhism and carves edicts across India.
- 221 BCE
Society First emperor of China
Qin Shi Huang unifies China, its script, its measures and its currency.
- 2nd–1st century BCE
Society Silk Roads
Caravans link China with Persia and the Mediterranean, carrying silk, ideas, religions and diseases.
- c. 1st century BCE–4th century CE
Image: Autoría desconocida · Public domain Roman art
Monumental engineering (arches, vaults, concrete), realistic portraiture and public works across the Mediterranean.
- 27 BCE
Society The Roman Empire begins
Augustus concentrates power; Rome dominates the Mediterranean for four centuries.
- around the turn of the era (date debated)
Society Amazigh settlement of the Canary Islands
Peoples from North Africa reach the islands and develop distinct cultures on each one.
- 1st–3rd century
Glossary Encaustic
Painting with pigments mixed into hot wax. The Fayum portraits in Egypt preserve it with intact colours.
- c. 105
Society Spread of paper
Paper is perfected in Han China. It reaches the Islamic world in the 8th century and Europe through al-Andalus.
- c. 125 (Pantheon)
Glossary Dome
A hemispherical vault covering a space. Rome’s Pantheon, Hagia Sophia and Ottoman mosques push it to the limit.
- 2nd–4th century
Glossary Catacomb
Underground cemetery of the early Christians in Rome. Its paintings are the start of Christian iconography.
- c. 200 (Teotihuacan)
Glossary Talud-tablero
A way of building pyramids alternating a sloping wall (talud) and a vertical panel (tablero). It is Teotihuacan’s signature, copied across Mesoamerica.
- c. 320–550
Society Gupta Empire
A time of great development in mathematics, astronomy and literature in India; zero comes into general use.
- 330
Image: Cplakidas · CC BY-SA 3.0 Founding of Constantinople
Constantine moves the capital to the Bosporus. It will be the centre of the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years.
- 4th–5th century
Image: PHGCOM · CC BY-SA 3.0 Aksum at its height
The Ethiopian kingdom trades between the Mediterranean and India, mints coins and adopts Christianity.
- 476
Image: Roke (d) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Fall of Rome in the West
The Western Roman Empire ends; the Eastern one, Byzantium, continues.
- Kingdoms and empires 500–1400
- 527–565
Society Reign of Justinian
Byzantium tries to win back the western Mediterranean, compiles Roman law and builds Hagia Sophia.
- 532–537 (Hagia Sophia)
Image: Dianelos Georgoudis · Public domain Byzantine art
Domes, gold mosaics and icons serving the Church and the emperor in Constantinople.
- 6th century
Glossary Icon
A sacred image painted on panel in the Byzantine and Orthodox world. It is seen not as a painting but as a window onto the divine.
- 6th–15th century
Image: Personal · Public domain Painted Cave of Gáldar (Gran Canaria)
A chamber decorated with geometric paintings in red, white and black, in a pre-conquest Canarian village.
- 618–907
Society Tang dynasty
China enjoys a cosmopolitan golden age: poetry, Buddhism and Chang’an as a great world city.
- 622
Society Islam is born
Muhammad migrates to Medina; within a century Islam spreads from Iberia to Central Asia.
- 711
Image: Al-Andalus732.jpg:Q4767211492~commonswiki (talk · contribs) EmiratoDeCórdoba910.svg:rowanwindwhistler (talk · contribs) derivative work: rowanwindwhistler (talk) · CC0 Al-Andalus
Almost eight centuries of Muslim presence in Iberia begin, a bridge of knowledge between East and Europe.
- 726–843
Glossary Iconoclasm
Rejection and destruction of religious images. In Byzantium it divides the state for over a century; it returns in the Protestant Reformation.
- 8th century (Islamic world); 12th century (Gothic)
Glossary Pointed arch
An arch of two curves meeting at a point. Umayyad and Abbasid architects use it before it reaches European Gothic.
- 762
Image: USACE HQ , JIM GORDAN, CIV, USACE · Public domain Founding of Baghdad
The Abbasid capital becomes a centre of science and translation of Greek, Persian and Indian texts.
- c. 800 (Book of Kells)
Glossary Manuscript illumination
Hand decoration of books with paint and gold. European monasteries, Islamic calligraphers and Persian workshops make it a major art.
- 802–1431
Image: Jembezmamy · CC0 Khmer Empire and Angkor
Khmer kings rule from Angkor, a vast city of temples and reservoirs.
- 868 (Diamond Sutra)
Glossary Woodcut
Wood engraving: the image is carved in relief, inked and printed. The oldest dated printed book is Chinese; centuries later it produces Japanese ukiyo-e.
- 960–1279
Society Song dynasty
Paper money, printing, the compass and big trading cities; landscape painting flourishes.
- c. 1000–1200
Art Romanesque
Thick-walled churches with round arches along the Way of St James; mural painting in flat colours.
- 10th–15th century
Glossary Interlace (lacería)
Decoration of crossing lines that form endless stars and polygons. Islamic art uses it to suggest the infinite without depicting figures.
- 1088 (Bologna)
Society First European universities
Bologna, Paris and Oxford organise the study of theology, law and medicine. Centres like al-Qarawiyyin in Fez existed earlier.
- 1095–1291
Image: anonymus · Public domain The Crusades
Military expeditions from Latin Europe to the Holy Land. Jerusalem falls in 1099 and Saladin retakes it in 1187.
- c. 1100–1450
Art Great Zimbabwe
Dry-stone walls without mortar at the capital of a south-east African trading kingdom.
- c. 1140–1500
Art Gothic
Tall, light-filled cathedrals with pointed arches, rib vaults and stained glass; cities and guilds grow.
- c. 1140 (Saint-Denis)
Glossary Rib vault
A vault reinforced by crossing ribs that carry the weight to the piers. It allows thinner walls and large windows: the basis of Gothic.
- c. 1200 (Chartres)
Glossary Stained glass
A window of coloured glass joined with lead. In Gothic art coloured light stands for God’s presence; rose windows are its most spectacular form.
- 12th–15th century
Image: Runehelmet · CC BY-SA 3.0 Indian Ocean trade
Kilwa, Mombasa and other Swahili ports trade gold, ivory and textiles with Arabia, India and China.
- 1206
Society Mongol Empire
Genghis Khan unites the Mongols; their empire, the largest land empire in history, connects Asia and Europe.
- c. 1235
Society The Mali Empire is founded
Sundiata Keita founds an empire that controls the Sahel gold trade; Timbuktu becomes a great centre of learning.
- 1258
Society The Mongols sack Baghdad
The Abbasid caliphate ends; entire libraries are lost.
- 1274 and 1281
Society The Mongols fail in Japan
Two Mongol fleets are repelled; the typhoons are remembered as kamikaze, “divine wind”.
- 14th–15th century
Art Ife heads (Nigeria)
Naturalistic portraits cast in copper alloy by Yoruba artists.
- 1325
Society Founding of Tenochtitlan
The Mexica found their city on an island in Lake Texcoco; it becomes one of the largest in the world.
- 14th–16th century
Society Timbuktu, city of learning
Mosques and libraries make the Sahel city a centre of study and manuscript trade.
- 1347–1351
Society Black Death
The pandemic arrives from Asia along trade routes and kills a third of Europe’s population.
- 1368
Society Ming dynasty
China drives out the Mongols and enters a long period of stability, porcelain and great works.
- Conquest and colonialism 1400–1800
- 1402–1496
Image: TUBS · CC BY-SA 3.0 Conquest of the Canary Islands
It begins with Béthencourt in Lanzarote and ends with the surrender of Tenerife. The islands are a rehearsal for Atlantic colonisation.
- 1405–1433
Society Voyages of Zheng He
Great Chinese fleets reach Arabia and the East African coast, decades before the Portuguese.
- c. 1415 (Brunelleschi)
Glossary Linear perspective
A geometric method for showing depth with lines converging on a vanishing point. China and Japan use other systems, such as parallel perspective.
- c. 1420–1600
Art Renaissance
Florence revives classical models; perspective, anatomy and the artist as intellectual, funded by bankers and popes.
- 1428
Society Aztec Triple Alliance
Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan ally; Mexica power rises in central Mexico.
- c. 1434 (Van Eyck)
Glossary Oil paint
Painting with pigments mixed in oil. The Flemish perfect it in the 15th century, though it was already used in the Bamiyan caves (Afghanistan) in the 7th century.
- 1438
Society Pachacuti and Tawantinsuyu
The Inca Pachacuti turns Cusco into the centre of an Andean empire linked by roads.
- c. 1450
Art Machu Picchu (Peru)
An Inca complex of tightly fitted mortarless stone, built into the mountain.
- 15th century
Glossary Humanism
An intellectual movement that puts humans at the centre and revives Greek and Latin texts. It turns the artist into an intellectual.
- 1453
Image: Autoría desconocida · Public domain Fall of Constantinople
The Ottomans take the city and end the Byzantine Empire; Istanbul becomes their capital.
- 1455 (Gutenberg)
Glossary Incunable
A book printed before 1501. Gutenberg’s movable type has precedents in China and Korea, where the Jikji was printed in 1377 with metal type.
- c. 1490 (Behzad, Herat)
Glossary Miniature
A small, detailed painting, mainly to illustrate books. In Persia, the Ottoman world and Mughal India it reaches extraordinary refinement.
- 1492
Society End of the Kingdom of Granada
Castile conquers the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia; the same year it expels the Jews.
- 1492
Society Columbus reaches the Caribbean
The invasion of Abya Yala begins. War, epidemics and forced labour devastate Indigenous peoples.
To watch
- 1498
Society The Portuguese reach India
Vasco da Gama sails round Africa to Calicut: Europe enters Indian Ocean trade.
- 16th–18th century
Society Columbian exchange
Plants, animals, people and diseases cross between continents: maize and potatoes reach Europe and smallpox the Americas.
- 16th–19th century
Society Transatlantic slave trade
More than twelve million African women and men are forcibly shipped to the Americas.
- c. 1503 (Leonardo)
Glossary Sfumato
Leonardo da Vinci’s technique: contours blurred with very thin layers of paint, as if there were smoke between the figure and the viewer.
- 1517
Society Protestant Reformation
Luther breaks with Rome. Europe splits into religious wars and images in churches are questioned.
- 1519–1522
Image: Abraham Ortelius · Public domain First circumnavigation
The Magellan–Elcano expedition sails round the planet.
- c. 1520–1600
Art Mannerism
Elongated figures, acid colours and tense compositions that break Renaissance balance.
- c. 1520–1600
Glossary Mannerism
A style that exaggerates and twists Renaissance forms: elongated bodies, strange colours and unstable compositions.
- 1521
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain Fall of Tenochtitlan
After a long siege, with Indigenous allies and smallpox, the Spanish take the Mexica capital.
- 1526
Society Mughal Empire
Babur founds an empire that rules much of India until the 18th century.
- 1532–1533
Image: Juan Lepiani · Public domain Conquest of Tawantinsuyu
Pizarro captures Atahualpa at Cajamarca in the middle of an Inca civil war.
- 1543
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain Copernicus: the Earth orbits the Sun
The European scientific revolution begins, building on Islamic astronomy.
- 1545–1563
Society Council of Trent
The Catholic Church answers the Reformation; art must be clear and moving: the Baroque is born.
- 16th century
Art Bronze plaques of the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria)
Reliefs that covered the pillars of the oba's palace and told the history of the court.
- 15th–17th century
Glossary Artesonado
A wooden ceiling of joined pieces forming geometric patterns. Of Mudéjar origin, it reaches the Canaries and the Americas, with notable examples in churches of La Laguna and Teguise.
- c. 1600–1750
Image: Peter Paul Rubens · Public domain Baroque
Chiaroscuro, movement and emotion serving the Counter-Reformation and absolute monarchies, in the American colonies too.
- c. 1600 (Caravaggio)
Glossary Tenebrism
A violent contrast between very dark areas and figures lit by a single beam. Caravaggio imposes it; Ribera and Zurbarán follow.
- 1603
Society Tokugawa shogunate
Japan enjoys two centuries of peace and isolation; cities and their popular culture grow.
- 1607
Society Founding of Jamestown
The first lasting English colony in North America, on Powhatan land.
- 17th century
Glossary Vanitas
A still life reminding us life is short: skulls, snuffed candles, withered flowers. Very popular in Holland and Spain.
- 1644
Society Qing dynasty
The Manchus conquer China; it will be the last imperial dynasty.
- 17th century
Glossary Genre scene
A painting of the everyday life of ordinary people. It thrives in bourgeois Holland, where people buy pictures for their homes.
- c. 1730–1770
Art Rococo
Light, decorative and playful art for the salons of the French aristocracy.
- 18th century
Society The Enlightenment
Reason, science and critique of power. The Encyclopédie appears from 1751.
- 1757 (Burke)
Glossary Sublime
The feeling before the immense or terrible, such as a storm or an abyss, which frightens and attracts at once. Key to Romanticism.
- c. 1760–1830
Art Neoclassicism
A return to Greece and Rome, with clean lines and civic themes, alongside the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
- c. 1760–1830
Glossary Neoclassicism
A return to Greco-Roman antiquity as a model of reason and civic virtue, after the finds at Pompeii. It is the style of the French Revolution.
- c. 1760
Society Industrial Revolution
The steam engine and the factory transform work, first in Britain, then worldwide.
- 1776
Society US independence
The thirteen colonies break from Britain, while keeping slavery.
- 1789
Society French Revolution
The Ancien Régime falls; the rights of man and of the citizen are proclaimed.
- 1796 (Senefelder)
Glossary Lithography
A printing technique on stone that repels or holds ink according to the drawing. It makes printed images cheap and fills cities with posters.
- Revolutions and colonial empires 1800–1900
- c. 1800–1850
Art Romanticism
Emotion, sublime nature, nationalism and a critique of war.
- c. 1800–1850
Glossary Romanticism
It puts emotion, the individual and wild nature above reason. The idea of the artist as misunderstood genius is born.
- 1804
Society Independence of Haiti
The revolution of enslaved people founds the first free Black republic.
- 1810–1825
Society Spanish American independence
Spain’s mainland colonies become republics, led by Creole elites.
- 1830
Society First modern railway
The Liverpool–Manchester line changes the sense of distance and time.
- c. 1831
Art The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Hokusai, Japan)
Woodblock print from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It will go on to influence European art.
To watch
- 1839–1860
Society Opium Wars
Britain forces China to accept the opium trade; the “century of humiliation” begins.
- c. 1848–1880
Art Realism
Painting the lives of peasants and workers as they are, without idealising them, amid the industrial revolution.
- 1848
Society Revolutions of 1848
Liberal, national and workers’ uprisings across Europe; the Communist Manifesto is published.
- c. 1850
Glossary Realism
Painting what one sees, including the life of peasants and workers, without idealising. Courbet makes it a political stance.
- 1857
Society Indian Rebellion of 1857
A great uprising against the East India Company; afterwards India is ruled by the Crown.
- 1859
Image: John Murray, Publisher · Public domain Darwin: On the Origin of Species
The theory of evolution by natural selection changes how life is understood.
- 1861–1865
Society American Civil War
The United States fights over slavery; at the end it is abolished nationwide.
- 1868
Society Meiji Restoration
Japan opens up and modernises at speed to avoid being colonised.
- 1869
Society Suez Canal
It links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, speeding up trade and colonisation.
- 1871
Image: Autoría desconocida · Public domain Paris Commune
For two months Paris governs itself; Courbet takes part and the repression is brutal.
- 1874 (first exhibition)
Art Impressionism
Open-air painting that captures light and the moment; it is also shaped by Japanese prints.
To watch
- 1884–1885
Image: Adalbert von Roessler · Public domain Berlin Conference
European powers divide Africa among themselves with no African voice at the table.
- c. 1886–1905
Art Post-Impressionism
Expressive colour and structure: personal paths that open the door to modern art.
To watch
- 1886 (Seurat)
Glossary Pointillism
Painting with small dots of pure colour that the eye blends. It draws on the colour science of its day.
- 1886
Glossary Symbolism
A reaction against Realism: art should suggest ideas, dreams and mysteries, not describe.
- 1888
Image: Senado Imperial · Public domain Abolition of slavery in Brazil
Brazil is the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.
- c. 1890–1910
Art Art Nouveau / Modernisme
Organic forms inspired by nature, uniting architecture, decorative arts and design.
To watch
- 1890–1914
Society Great transatlantic migrations
Millions of Europeans, Canary Islanders among them, emigrate to the Americas: Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, the USA.
- 1894–1895
Society Sino-Japanese War
Japan defeats China and takes Taiwan: its colonial empire begins.
- 1897
Society Looting of Benin
British troops raze Benin City and carry off thousands of works still held in European museums today.
- 1899–1902
Society Boer War
Britain prevails in South Africa using concentration camps.
- Avant-gardes and the Great War 1900–1918
- c. 1905
Art Bengal School
Indian painters revive their own techniques and subjects against the academic art imposed by the British Empire.
- 1905 (Die Brücke)
Art Expressionism
Distorted forms and violent colour to express anguish; it revives the woodcut.
To watch
- 1905
Art Fauvism
Pure, arbitrary colour at the Paris Salon d’Automne; critics call them “wild beasts”.
- 1905
Glossary Fauvism
Pure, violent colour that does not imitate reality. Critics call Matisse and Derain “wild beasts”.
- 1905
Glossary Expressionism
Distorting form and colour to express anguish and inner emotion. It revives the woodcut as a direct language.
- 1904–1905
Society Russo-Japanese War
Japan defeats Russia: for the first time an Asian country beats a modern European power.
- 1907
Art Cubism
It breaks single-point perspective and splits objects into planes; it draws on African sculpture, which reaches Paris through colonialism.
- 1909 (manifesto)
Art Futurism
It glorifies machines, speed and war; some of its members later become linked to Italian Fascism.
- 1909
Glossary Futurism
It exalts the machine, speed and war and wants to destroy museums. Several members end up supporting Fascism.
- 1910–1920
Society Mexican Revolution
Peasants and Indigenous peoples rise up for land with Zapata and Villa.
- c. 1906–1911
Glossary Abstraction
Art that represents no recognisable objects, only shape, line and colour. Often credited to Kandinsky, though Hilma af Klint painted this way in 1906.
- 1914–1918
Society First World War
Millions die in Europe; the powers also mobilise soldiers from Africa and Asia.
- c. 1915–1930
Image: El Lissitzky · Public domain Constructivism
In revolutionary Russia, art is put to work building a new society.
To watch
- 1916 (Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich)
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain Dada
Anti-art born in the middle of the First World War: chance, collage, readymades and performance.
- 1917
Society Russian Revolution
Tsarism falls and the first socialist state is born.
- Interwar years and the Second World War 1918–1945
- 1918
Art Luján Pérez School (Gran Canaria)
A free art school in Las Palmas that drives Canarian indigenismo: the islands’ landscape, people and Aboriginal culture.
- 1918–1920
Society 1918 flu pandemic
It kills tens of millions worldwide, more than the war.
- 1919–1933
Image: Spyrosdrakopoulos · CC BY-SA 4.0 Bauhaus
A German school uniting art, craft and industry; the Nazis close it in 1933.
- 1919
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain May Fourth Movement
Chinese students protest against the Treaty of Versailles and call for science, democracy and a new culture.
- 1920s
Art Harlem Renaissance
An African American cultural explosion in New York that affirms Black identity and its African roots.
- 1922
Art Mexican muralism
Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros paint public walls to tell history from the people and Indigenous roots.
To watch
- 1924 (manifesto)
Art Surrealism
Dreams, desire and the unconscious as the stuff of art. It reaches Tenerife in 1935.
To watch
- 1928
Art Anthropophagy (Brazil)
The Cannibal Manifesto proposes “devouring” European culture to create a Brazilian art of its own. Tarsila paints Abaporu.
- 1929
Image: US-gov · Public domain Wall Street Crash
The New York stock market crash opens the Great Depression worldwide.
- 1935
Art School of the South (Uruguay)
Torres García calls for looking from the south: “our north is the south”. In 1943 he draws the inverted map of America.
- 1935
Art Surrealist exhibition in Tenerife
Organised by Gaceta de Arte at the Ateneo in Santa Cruz; André Breton and Benjamin Péret travel there. Óscar Domínguez is among the artists.
- 1936
Society Military coup and civil war
Franco leaves Gran Canaria on 18 July to take command of the troops in Morocco.
- 1937
Art Guernica (Picasso)
A response to the bombing of the Basque town by Nazi and Fascist Italian aircraft.
To watch
- 1939–1945
Society Second World War
The deadliest war in history, with the Holocaust and fronts in Europe, Asia and Africa.
- c. 1943–1960
Art Abstract Expressionism
Large canvases of gesture and colour in New York, which becomes the new capital of the art market.
To watch
- 1943
Art The Jungle (Wifredo Lam, Cuba)
Lam blends the avant-garde with Afro-Cuban spirituality in a key work of Caribbean art.
- Post-war and decolonisation 1945–1968
- 1945
Image: Grete Stern · Public domain Arte Concreto-Invención (Argentina)
River Plate geometric abstraction: irregular frames, moving works and art as invention rather than copy.
- 1945
Society Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The US drops two atomic bombs on Japan.
- 1945
Society The UN is founded
Fifty countries sign the UN Charter in San Francisco.
- 1947
Art Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group
Founded in the year of independence to create a modern Indian art, free from colonial academicism.
- 1947
Society Independence and Partition of India
British rule ends; the division into India and Pakistan displaces millions.
- 1948
Society Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Adopted in Paris, it becomes the world’s reference for rights.
- 1949
Society Chinese Revolution
The People’s Republic of China is proclaimed.
- 1954
Art Gutai (Japan)
In post-war Japan, the body and action do the painting: mud, feet, torn paper. It anticipates performance art.
- 1955
Image: Naum Gabo · CC0 Kinetic and Op art
Works that move or vibrate as the viewer looks; Venezuela is one of its great centres.
- 1955
Image: Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia · Public domain Bandung Conference (Indonesia)
Asian and African countries meet against colonialism and outside the two Cold War blocs.
- 1955–1968
Image: Rowland Scherman · Public domain Civil rights movement
From the Montgomery bus boycott on, African Americans fight racial segregation.
- 1955–1975
Society Vietnam War
The war against the United States sparks protests worldwide and ends with the country’s reunification.
- 1957 (El Paso group)
Art Art informel
Matter, gesture and rupture in post-war painting; in Spain, the El Paso group.
- 1958
Art Zaria Art Society (Nigeria)
Nigerian students propose a “natural synthesis” of local traditions and modernity, on the eve of independence.
- 1959
Art Neo-Concretism (Brazil)
Works to touch, wear and handle: the audience stops looking and starts taking part.
- 1959
Society Cuban Revolution
The revolution triumphs in Cuba, in the middle of the Cold War.
- 1950s–1960s
Art Studio portraiture in Bamako (Mali)
Malian photographers portray urban youth enjoying newly won independence, fashion and music.
- 1960
Image: Penarc · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Year of Africa
Seventeen African countries become independent in a single year.
- 1960s
Society Mass tourism reaches the Canary Islands
Charter flights and coastal resorts transform the islands’ economy and land.
- 1962
Art Fluxus
An international network mixing music, action and everyday life; art as process rather than object.
- c. 1956–1970
Art Pop art
Born in Britain, it explodes in New York: advertising, comics and consumer goods turned into art.
- c. 1965
Image: Marcel Duchamp / Alfred Stieglitz · Public domain Conceptual art
The idea matters more than the object: texts, instructions and documents become the work.
- c. 1965
Art Minimalism
Simple forms and industrial materials, with no trace of the artist’s hand.
- 1965
Art Video art
With the first portable cameras, artists such as Nam June Paik turn television into an artistic material.
- 1966
Art World Festival of Black Arts (Dakar)
Senghor gathers artists from Africa and the diaspora to affirm Black cultures.
- 1966
Art Narcissus Garden (Yayoi Kusama)
Uninvited, Kusama fills a lawn at the Venice Biennale with mirrored spheres and sells them for two dollars each.
To watch
- 1967
Image: Gerardus · Public domain Arte povera
Poor and natural materials (earth, rags, branches) against consumerism and the art market.
- 1967
Art Tropicália (Brazil)
An installation by Oiticica that names an art and music movement against the dictatorship and for a mixed culture.
- Countercultures and dictatorships 1968–1989
- 1968
Art Mono-ha (Japan)
“School of things”: stone, earth, wood and steel placed with minimal intervention, to think about materials and space.
- 1968
Art Tucumán Arde (Argentina)
Artists investigate and denounce sugar-mill closures and hunger under the dictatorship: art as political action.
- 1968
Society Tlatelolco massacre
The Mexican army fires on students in Mexico City, ten days before the Olympic Games.
- 1957–1969
Image: Neil A. Armstrong · Public domain From Sputnik to the Moon
The USSR launches Sputnik in 1957; in 1969 two astronauts walk on the Moon.
- 1970
Art Land art
The work leaves the museum and is made with the land itself, like Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
- 1971
Image: Mary Schepisi · CC BY 3.0 Feminist art
Linda Nochlin asks why there have been no “great women artists”, and feminist art revisits the whole of art history.
- 1973
Art Mirador del Río (César Manrique, Lanzarote)
Architecture dug into the cliff that merges with the volcanic landscape.
- 1973
Image: Isochrone · CC BY-SA 4.0 Oil crisis
Arab producers cut supplies; the era of cheap oil ends.
- 1973
Society Coup in Chile
Pinochet overthrows Allende; a dictatorship and the first neoliberal laboratory begin.
- 1974
Art Performance and body art
The artist’s body becomes the work; in Rhythm 0, Abramović lets the audience use 72 objects on her.
- 1975
Society Spain leaves Western Sahara
The Madrid Accords hand the territory to Morocco and Mauritania without decolonising it. The Sahrawi people are still waiting.
- 1976
Art Chicano muralism
Heir to Mexican muralism, it tells on the walls of Los Angeles the history the textbooks leave out.
- 1978
Image: 张元柏 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Deng Xiaoping’s reforms
China opens its economy to the market and becomes the world’s factory.
- c. 1980
Art Graffiti and street art
From the New York subway to the galleries: the street enters the museum.
To watch
- 1981
Society HIV/AIDS crisis
The epidemic hits the whole world, Africa above all; activism and art, like ACT UP, change public health.
- 1982
Society Canary Islands Statute of Autonomy
The Canary Islands become an autonomous community.
- 1984
Image: CACWifredoLam · CC BY-SA 4.0 Havana Biennial
The first major biennial devoted to art from Latin America, Africa and Asia, outside the Europe–US circuit.
- A global world 1989–today
- 1989
Art Magiciens de la Terre (Paris)
An exhibition gathering artists from every continent; it opens debate on how the West looks at art from the rest of the world.
- 1989
Society The Berlin Wall falls
The end of the Cold War and a faster pace of economic globalisation.
To watch
- 1991
Society End of the USSR
The Cold War ends and fifteen states are born.
- 1991
Society The World Wide Web is born
It is created at CERN in Geneva; within a decade the internet enters daily life.
- 1994
Society End of apartheid
South Africa’s first non-racial elections; Mandela becomes president.
- 1994
Society Zapatista uprising
The EZLN rises in Chiapas for Indigenous rights on the day NAFTA comes into force.
- c. 1994–1998
Art Net.art
Works made for and with the internet, in the early years of the web.
- 1990s
Art Relational art
The work is the encounter: cooking, sharing or talking with the audience. Bourriaud names it in 1998.
- 2001
Society 9/11 attacks
The attacks in New York and Washington open two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- 2008
Image: David Shankbone · CC BY-SA 3.0 Global financial crisis
The collapse of Lehman Brothers sets off a global crisis; in Spain and the Canaries, unemployment and evictions.
- 2011
Society Arab Spring
Protests from Tunisia to Syria topple governments and open wars.
- 2015
Image: L.tak · CC BY-SA 4.0 Paris climate agreement
Almost every country commits to limiting global warming.
- 2018
Society Sarr–Savoy report
It recommends that France return looted African heritage. Restitutions begin, such as Benin bronzes returned to Nigeria.
To watch
- 2020
Image: Gustavo Basso · CC BY-SA 4.0 COVID-19 pandemic
The virus detected in Wuhan brings the world to a halt; museums and stages close for months.
- 2022
Society Generative AI
Programs that generate text and images open debates on authorship, work and creativity.
- 2022
Society Russian invasion of Ukraine
The largest war in Europe since 1945.
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