Painting

Art Shortlist has carefully selected modern and contemporary paintings for you. You also have the possibility to discover them through our various thematic sections.

Since Prehistory, painting has inspired and fascinated mankind. The Fine Arts have always reserved it a place of choice in the hierarchy of the arts. Technical and creative, painting requires a lot of requirement and rigour.

The painters have only the embarrassment of the choice to choose a painting technique. They can for example use: water paint, oil paint, acrylic paint, ink paint, or mix several of these techniques.

One can also mention watercolor, which comes from mixing an aqueous solution with gum, usually gum arabic. Gouache is also a water painting technique obtained with chalk, which makes it more reflective and opaque than watercolor.

In painting, the supports used play a major role. It is on the supports that the artist will rest to let his creativity and his talent speak. The variety of supports is very wide, especially in contemporary creation, the painter can use: wood, canvas, an everyday object, street furniture, and any other medium that can be painted by hand.

Today, the most famous support is undoubtedly the canvas. Indeed, since its invention in the 15th century, paintings on canvas have been supplying the art market. Some scholars of art history consider the first artist known to have used it to be none other than Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506).

In street art, walls remain the preferred medium, even if canvas is becoming more and more used by street artists. The latter use the spray can to express themselves and create. Painting is therefore able to adapt to all media, it has no limits.

Also, contemporary painters tend more and more to use mixed techniques, mixing several techniques and / or media. Discoveries and explorations are therefore still possible in the field of painting.

Each painting is unique; its form, its support, its subject, its colors and its perceptive form a singular whole. 

Over the centuries, the history of art has taught us that the practice of art is never fixed, it evolves according to customs. 

In painting, a standard deeply rooted in artistic culture and academia can quickly be shaken by an avant-garde movement that will later become a reference, a model to follow.

How can we talk about painting without evoking the subject or the concept behind each painted work. From the Renaissance to the present day, the themes evoked and the artistic approaches have evolved.

In figurative painting, we can highlight two important themes: religious and mythological painting with the masters of the Renaissance, landscape painting and scenes of life with the artists of modern art. Since the dawn of time, painting has dealt with a multitude of subjects that no book can summarize.

As far as abstract art is concerned, the approach is quite different, since it gives a central place to the emotions and the feeling of the canvas. Abstract art was born during the 20th century. The colors and the rendering of matter are subjects in their own right when we are faced with abstraction.

Painting is in constant evolution, experimentations and artistic movements are changing codes. New techniques and problems appear.

Take for example the case of the Impressionists, the latter gave particular importance to light variations by seeking to paint the world as they saw it. The Cubists, for their part, focused on the representation of the perceptive and forms. With Andy Warhol, Pop Art highlighted Western consumer society and popular icons. 

These artists and movements are true compasses for the history of painting. Today, a painter like JonOne brings urban art to the canvas. He can be considered as a link between the art of the past and the street art phenomenon.

Today, contemporary art is too often associated with abstract art. Certainly, abstraction has a major place in contemporary paintings, but contemporary art is very varied.

Figuration is still very important for some contemporary artists, and many current art collectors are interested in oil or acrylic paintings representing concrete elements visible to the naked eye.

On Art Shortlist, we offer modern and contemporary paintings that art lovers will appreciate. Our selection of works of art combines famous artists of modern art and recognized artists of contemporary art. These painters are creators internationally recognized by their fathers and by the art world. You will find figurative as well as abstract paintings in our catalog.

A wide variety of paintings is offered to you, to better appreciate our selections, we invite you to explore the paintings by themes. Artistic pearls await you, find for example: portraits, landscapes and seascapes, life scenes, geometric paintings and street art.

Browse through our themes by filtering the works by size to find the perfect painting for your wall decoration. Small, medium and large paintings are waiting for you. Discover the paintings of your dreams on Art Shortlist.