Existential Art
also: Existentialist art
Existential art is not an organized movement but a sensibility - art made under the shadow of existentialist philosophy, above all in the years after the Second World War, when thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus made alienation, absurdity and freedom central questions. In paint and sculpture this becomes the lone, often attenuated human figure set in a bare or hostile space, rendered with an agitated or eroded surface. Alberto Giacometti's standing men, thinned almost to disappearance, and Francis Bacon's screaming, boxed figures are its emblematic images. The look spread widely because it matched the mood of a continent that had seen the camps and the bomb: existence reduced to a body, a room and dread.
Defining characteristics
- Isolated, attenuated or distorted figures facing an empty or enclosing space
- Agitated, eroded or raw surfaces that register psychological strain
- Muted, earthy palettes broken by harsh accents
- Themes of alienation, anxiety, absurdity and mortality
- Reduction of the scene to bare essentials: figure, ground, tension
Key figures
- Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) — Sculptor of gaunt standing figures that embody postwar solitude
- Francis Bacon (1909-1992) — Painter of screaming, caged figures and existential violence
Example works
- Man Pointing — Alberto Giacometti (1947)
- Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion — Francis Bacon (1944)
Sources
- Existential Art - WikiArt institution