"Modern Painting primarily sought to preserve the essence of the painter's creative gesture, to free it from anything superfluous to expression, from anything that respects a dead convention and that our eyes alone are increasingly accustomed to eliminating. Thus, the main act of modern Painting, as it passionately seeks reality, was to gradually liberate the painter's vision, to try to express the indefinite and demanding presence of things, their lyrical proportions, their relationships with the human-painter."
Teriade, "La peau de la peinture" in the magazine Minotaure (issue 7, Paris 1935, p. 1).

The object of this brief retrospective on milestones of contemporary art is to explore the era that accompanies "modernism". What is this new way of thinking and creating, and how does it differ from the art that precedes it?