Modern art begins with the heritage of painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec all of whom were essential for the development of modern art.
Initially influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and other late 19th century innovators, Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne’s idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone.
Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of athe 19th century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier.
Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis (its representation of reality), expression, communication of emotion, or other qualities.
