Modernism
![Hans Hofmann, The Gate, 1959–60, collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he introduced Modernism and modernist theories to a new generation of American artists. Through his teaching and his lectures at his art schools in Greenwich Village and Provincetown, Massachusetts, he widened the scope of Modernism in the United States.[1]](/Images/godic/202501/27/Hans_Hofmann's_painting_'The_Gate',_1959–603826.jpg")
![Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830, a Romantic work of art](/Images/godic/202501/27/Eugène_Delacroix_-_La_liberté_guidant_le_peuple3826.jpg")
![A Realist portrait of Otto von Bismarck](/Images/godic/202501/27/Franz_von_Lenbach_Bismarck3826.jpg")
![Odilon Redon, Guardian Spirit of the Waters, 1878, charcoal on paper, Art Institute of Chicago](/Images/godic/202501/27/Redon_spirit-waters3827.jpg")
Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.