National Galleries of Scotland

Abstract art

Art in which there is no attempt to represent anything existing in the world, particularly used of the 20th century onwards. `Abstraction? refers to the process of making images that may in part derive from the visible world but which are reduced to basic formal elements.

COBRA

A group of Expressionist artists active in the late 1940s and 1950s. The name is derived from the letters of the capital cities of the countries of the artists involved - Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The group included Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and Pierre Alechinsky.

Expressionism

A style that made an impact in the arts in the 1920s, particularly in Germany. Expressionists deliberately abandoned realistic representation techniques in favour of exaggerations and distortions of line and colour that were intended to carry far greater emotional impact.

Naïve art

Work by self-taught artists who don't adhere to traditional representational practices or other artistic conventions.

Primitive

A term once used to describe the art of non-Western cultures such as Africa and Oceania, now generally seen as deprecatory and indicative of an outdated belief in Western superiority. It is also used to describe artists, usually self-taught, who work outside of the currents of mainstream art practice.