Modern Canvas Art

Queen of the Night by Salome High US$199

Hitler's Head by Johan van Staden US$89

Welcome to SouthAfricanArtists.com online art gallery. Search our gallery to view the wide range of quality art currently available to buy. View examples of search subjects such as: Contemporary and Surrealist.

Our online art gallery contains a wide variety of modern canvas art for you to browse through. All our paintings are high quality original art works, we do not sell art prints. Feel free to use our advanced search options to find exactly what you are looking for and if you find an item you would like to purchase our checkout system is simple and fast to use.

Origins Of Modern Canvas Art

The term 'modern art' is used to describe art that was produced from the late 1800's until the 1970's. Towards the end of the 19th century there were three movements emerging that were to have a strong influence on the whole period of original modern canvas art. They were called Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism.

Impressionists held the view that people did not actually see objects themselves, they only saw light as it reflected off an object. They concentrated on producing their art paintings in natural light, away from artificially lit art studios.

Some well known Post-Impressionists include Cezanne, Gauguin and van Gogh. They tended to put more emphasis on geometric shapes but still used strong colours, real world subjects and well defined brush strokes.

The Symbolism art movement came out of Belgium and France, it concentrated on darker, gothic type imagery. Friedrich and Fuseli were both well known Symbolist artists.

Modern contemporary art was often criticised during the period of it's production. People at the time often found it difficult to see the skill or meaning behind these paintings and just dismissed them as either bad or insignificant. However, it is now widely accepted by art critics that some of the greatest artists ever to have lived worked during this period.

If you have any questions about our contemporary, modern original art work please get in touch, we are always happy to discuss our modern canvas art with potential customers.