Precisionism

Precisionism

Smooth, precise technique used primarily in the 1920s by several U.S. painters in representational canvases depicting sharply defined forms, such as urban skylines; the industrial landscape of factories and smokestacks, buildings, and machinery; and country landscapes with grain elevators and barns or empty desert and sky. The scenes are always devoid of people or signs of human activity. Precisionism is a “cool” art, which keeps the viewer at a distance. It had its origins in Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism; in turn it influenced Pop art. Though it was not a school or movement with a formal program, the Precisionist artists, including Charles Demuth and Georgia O'Keeffe, often exhibited together.