All AP Art History Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
Pablo Picasso took direct inspiration from all of the following artists EXCEPT __________.
Diego Velázquez
Henri Matisse
Wassily Kandinsky
El Greco
Wassily Kandinsky
Pablo Picasso emerged in the early years of the the twentieth century from Spain being clearly influenced by his Spanish antecedents Diego Velázquez, El Greco, and Francisco de Goya. When he moved to Paris in 1901, he began to be influenced, and helped shape the careers of, fellow artists like Henri Matisse and Georges Braque. After the 1930s, however, while Picasso himself was massively influential, he began to retreat into his own style and missed out on innovations by painters like Wassily Kandinsky.
Example Question #1 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
The above work of art is a representative of the movement known as __________.
Bauhaus
Impressionism
De Stijl
Surrealism
De Stijl
The De Stijl movement grew out of the work of a select group of Dutch modernists in the 1890s, who all focused on basic shapes and form over function in design. Piet Mondrian, whose Tableau I is displayed here, was the foremost painter of the De Stijl movement. Mondrian's chief visual markers—primary colors, simple geometric forms, and thick black lines—are all hallmarks of the De Stijl movement more generally.
Image: Tableau I by Piet Mondrian (1921)
Example Question #1 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
The artist of the above work was hugely influential to __________.
Pop Art
Surrealism
Neorealism
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism
Mondrian's use of geometric shapes and simple lines gave him the opportunity to create abstract art that nonetheless borrowed from familiar forms. The abstract expressionists, who flourished in the two decades after World War II in New York City, similarly used bold expressions of color and shapes to create abstract forms. Many of the abstract expressionists, most notably Mark Rothko, similarly used large blocks of color on sizable canvasses.
Image: Tableau I by Piet Mondrian (1921)
Example Question #1 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
The artistic style belonging to this artist is distinguished by all of the following EXCEPT __________.
wide use of abstract shapes
thick black lines running across the canvas
wide use of squares and rectangles
wide use of primary colors
wide use of abstract shapes
While Piet Mondrian, the creator of this painting, is well known as an abstract artist, he actually used essentially no abstract shapes in his paintings. Instead, Mondrian placed together thick black lines to create geometrical patterns, almost entirely in squares and rectangles, and then used large blocks of primary colors to create different images.
Image: Tableau I by Piet Mondrian (1921)
Example Question #2 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
This painting was highly influenced by __________.
the Christian religion
advanced mathematics
classic literature
scientific discoveries
advanced mathematics
As an example of cubism, this painting deeply engages with various forms of advanced mathematics, especially geometry. Cubism broke down forms to various geometric shapes, and rendered them in crystalline forms based on those shapes. Cubism could be taken to different lengths; certain works may have a difficult underlying shape to discern, but Gris' Portrait of Pablo Picasso surrounds a rather conventional human form with geometric shapes.
Figure: Portrait of Pablo Picasso by Juan Gris (1912)
Example Question #2 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
Which of the following best describes the purpose of Picasso's Guernica?
A reaction to industrialization
A response to Fascist violence during the Spanish civil war
An exploration of human relationships
A reflection on the purpose of war
A response to Fascist violence during the Spanish civil war
Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) was painted in response to the Fascist bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The black-and-white cubist painting uses animal imagery to denote brutality and darkness, as well as a women with a torch to symbolize freedom.
Example Question #1 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
All of the following statements are true of Henri Matisse's Red Room (Harmony in Red) except ___________.
as a development of fauvism, color here is utilized as the formal element most responsible for pictorial coherence and is the primary conveyor of meaning
this painting demonstrates the fauvist tendency to use mixed, muted colors to convey meaning, rather than pure, intense hues
this painting testifies to the Fauve movement's interest in color's structural, expressive, and aesthetic capabilities
the rich contrasting colors here give this simple scene much of its emotional intensity
the objects are depicted in a simplified and schematized fashion with flattened-out forms
this painting demonstrates the fauvist tendency to use mixed, muted colors to convey meaning, rather than pure, intense hues
Henri Matisse and the Fauve movement where primarily interested in intense, unadulterated color as a formal element to convey meaning. The colors in this painting imbue it with deep emotional intensity.
Example Question #2 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
Which conflict most inspired the work shown here?
Napoleonic Wars
Franco-Prussian War
World War I
World War II
World War I
Self-Portrait as a Soldier was painted in 1915, just after the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had volunteered for service in World War I and quickly been discharged for mental health reasons. The alienation and detachment is shown by the off color in the main subject's skin tone and his missing hand, while his pride of being a soldier is evident in the prominence of the military uniform. With the general abstractness and surreality of the expressionists present before World War I, the horrors and frustrations of the conflict made post-war expressionism much darker in both color and subject.
Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kirchner_-_Selbstbildnis_als_Soldat.jpg
Example Question #3 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow from 1930 represents the artist's style by featuring ___________________.
wide use of natural light elements
obvious brushstrokes in bright colors
abstract representations of natural figures
large blocks of the primary colors
large blocks of the primary colors
Piet Mondrian was a part of the Dutch artistic movement known as De Stijl, Dutch for simply "The Style," a group of painters working before the First World War who attempted to distill art to its basic elements. Between the World Wars, Mondrian pushed ahead with similar work in Paris he termed "Neoplasticism." Mondrian's hallmarks from this period were thick black horizontal and vertical lines across a white canvas, while inside some of the resultant rectangular shapes were large blocks of primary colors.
Example Question #4 : Twentieth And Twenty First Century 2 D Art
Georges Braque used stencilled letters in this work in order to __________________.
draw a contrast to the strong imagery in the rest of the work
label his work with the piece's title
underscore the tie to realistic representation in the overall work
force the viewer to see the work outside of representational terms
force the viewer to see the work outside of representational terms
The letters “D BAL” are stenciled in the upper right corner of Portuguese, placed there by Georges Braque seemingly separately from the rest of the painting. As a cubist artist, Braque’s intention was to deconstruct the very concept of representation and clear imagery and present art in a new manner. Including the stencilled letters further reinforces the way in which the work of art intentionally separates itself from the traditional expectations of painting.
All AP Art History Resources
![Learning Tools by Varsity Tutors](https://vt-vtwa-app-assets.varsitytutors.com/assets/problems/og_image_practice_problems-9cd7cd1b01009043c4576617bc620d0d5f9d58294f59b6d6556fd8365f7440cf.jpg)