Search the artists, movements, design trends and front-room prints of every decade from the 1920s to now. Type a name or a style, or pick an era and browse.
The 1920s
Artists
- Pablo Picasso, in his neoclassical phase after cubism.
- Tamara de Lempicka, whose deco portraits still define the look of the decade.
- Rene Magritte, painting his first surrealist works from 1926.
- Paul Nash, carrying his war paintings into an English modernism.
- Georgia O'Keeffe, with the first of the large flower paintings.
- Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, both teaching at the Bauhaus.
Styles and movements
- Art deco - geometry, symmetry, chrome, sunbursts and expensive materials.
- Surrealism, formally launched by Andre Breton's manifesto in 1924.
- Constructivism and the Soviet poster.
- Bauhaus modernism: form follows function, and the designer trained like a craftsman.
- Art nouveau finally out of fashion, looking Victorian to anyone under thirty.
Art and design trends
- Design becomes a profession, and the Bauhaus (founded 1919) sets the curriculum.
- The 1925 Paris exhibition gives art deco its name and its export market.
- Advertising and the poster become the art most people actually looked at.
- Photography starts being taken seriously as art rather than as a record.
- Cinema design and architecture push deco into ordinary British high streets.
On the walls at home
- Deco motifs on everything affordable: clocks, biscuit tins, fire surrounds.
- Framed photographs and a reproduction landscape over the fireplace.
- Railway posters - the LNER and Southern Railway commissioned real artists.
- Wallpaper still dark and patterned in most houses.
Read the full 1920s art guide
The 1930s
Artists
- Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, both finding their sculptural language.
- Ben Nicholson, with the white reliefs from 1934.
- Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory (1931).
- Edward Hopper, painting American loneliness.
- Frida Kahlo, largely unknown outside Mexico at the time.
- Eric Ravilious, whose watercolours and wood engravings are the most English thing in the decade.
Styles and movements
- Surrealism reaching Britain - the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.
- Social realism and documentary art, driven by the Depression.
- British modernism: abstraction, Hampstead, then Cornwall.
- Streamline moderne - deco with the corners rounded off.
- Mass Observation and the documentary photograph.
Art and design trends
- Public art programmes: the American WPA, and in Britain, poster commissions from Shell and London Transport.
- Modernist architecture arrives in Britain, mostly white, flat-roofed and controversial.
- Artists fleeing Europe reshape British and American art from mid-decade.
- Penguin Books (1935) makes good typography an everyday object.
- Photography in magazines becomes the dominant popular image.
On the walls at home
- Shell and London Transport posters, designed by artists and given away or sold cheaply.
- Sunburst gates, stained glass ships and geometric lino in new suburban semis.
- Reproduction prints from the department store - Constable, and 'The Boyhood of Raleigh'.
- Radio sets as furniture, with veneer and deco grilles.
Read the full 1930s art guide
The 1940s
Artists
- Henry Moore, whose shelter drawings are the images of the Blitz.
- Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash, official war artists.
- L. S. Lowry, painting industrial Salford.
- Jackson Pollock, with the first drip paintings from 1947.
- Francis Bacon - Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944).
- Eric Ravilious, lost on active service in 1942.
Styles and movements
- War art: the official scheme recorded the home front as well as the fighting.
- Neo-romanticism - dark, linear British landscape painting.
- Utility design: rationed materials, no ornament, and surprisingly good results.
- Abstract expressionism starting in New York, unknown in Britain until later.
- Documentary photography as the defining image of the decade.
Art and design trends
- The art market stops; galleries empty their walls and store the collections.
- The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts becomes the Arts Council in 1946.
- New York replaces Paris as the centre of the art world.
- Utility furniture and the Board of Trade mark shape what a British home looks like.
- Post-war planning puts murals and public art into new schools and estates.
On the walls at home
- Blackout everything, then years of make do and mend.
- Government information posters as the most-seen graphic design in the country.
- Utility furniture: plain, well made, and still in use decades later.
- Family photographs and a calendar - decoration was not a priority.
Read the full 1940s art guide
The 1950s
Artists
- Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, the height of abstract expressionism.
- Lucian Freud, painting the first of the unsparing portraits.
- Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, laying the ground for pop art.
- Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, now internationally known.
- Lucienne Day, whose Calyx textile (1951) changed British furnishing.
- Abram Games, the poster designer behind the Festival of Britain emblem.
Styles and movements
- Contemporary style: atomic motifs, spindly legs, bright pattern on pale grounds.
- Abstract expressionism, and the beginnings of a British answer to it.
- The Festival of Britain look - science, pattern and optimism.
- Kitchen sink painting, the visual parallel to kitchen sink drama.
- Mid-century modern design coming in from Scandinavia and America.
Art and design trends
- The Festival of Britain in 1951 sells modern design to a public tired of austerity.
- The Design Council pushes good design into shops and schools.
- Colour printing gets cheap, so magazines and posters get brighter.
- Television begins competing with the poster for the public's eye.
- Art schools expand and start taking working-class students in numbers.
On the walls at home
- Contemporary wallpaper on one wall and plain on the other three.
- The flying ducks, and Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl on the chimney breast.
- Formica, boomerang patterns and pale wood.
- Framed prints bought from Boots, which sold pictures as well as pills.
Read the full 1950s art guide
The 1960s
Artists
- David Hockney, from the Royal College to California.
- Bridget Riley, whose op art paintings made people dizzy on purpose.
- Andy Warhol - Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and the Factory.
- Roy Lichtenstein, painting comic panels at wall size.
- Peter Blake, who designed the Sgt Pepper sleeve in 1967.
- Mary Quant and Ossie Clark, designers as culturally central as painters.
Styles and movements
- Pop art - advertising, packaging and celebrity treated as subject matter.
- Op art, and its immediate theft by the fashion trade.
- Psychedelia: swirling type, saturated colour, Art Nouveau revived and distorted.
- Minimalism in New York, cool and unimpressed by all of the above.
- Brutalist architecture, loved by architects and nobody else.
Art and design trends
- The album sleeve becomes the most widely owned piece of graphic design in Britain.
- The poster boom - bedroom walls become a gallery for the first time.
- The Beatles and the boutique make British design a global export.
- Art schools produce as many musicians as painters.
- Colour television arrives at the end of the decade and changes what design has to do.
On the walls at home
- Posters bought from Athena and blu-tacked to the wall.
- Big bold wallpaper, orange and brown, and a paper lampshade.
- Album sleeves propped on the shelf as decoration.
- The first wave of mass-produced framed prints in every high street.
Read the full 1960s art guide
The 1970s
Artists
- Gilbert and George, living sculptures.
- David Hockney, at the height of the pool paintings.
- Jamie Reid, whose ransom-note Sex Pistols artwork defined punk.
- Roger Dean, painting the fantasy album sleeves for Yes.
- Hipgnosis, the design studio behind Dark Side of the Moon (1973).
- Carl Andre, whose Equivalent VIII bricks caused a tabloid row in 1976.
Styles and movements
- Conceptual art, land art and performance - the object stops being the point.
- Punk graphics: photocopiers, cut-up type, deliberate ugliness.
- Photorealism, as a reaction to all of the above.
- Seventies decor: brown, orange, avocado, and a lot of pattern.
- The gatefold sleeve as a canvas for an illustrator.
Art and design trends
- The Tate bricks row in 1976 becomes the decade's standing argument about modern art.
- Punk makes design something you could do yourself with scissors and a photocopier.
- Feminist art history begins reclaiming artists the textbooks had dropped.
- Graphic design goes freelance, driven by records, magazines and the music press.
- Public art in new towns and shopping precincts, mostly concrete.
On the walls at home
- Athena posters - the tennis girl arrived in 1976.
- Woodchip, artex swirls and a brown three-piece suite.
- Gatefold sleeves left out on the floor.
- Macrame, pampas grass and a wall-mounted decorative plate.
Read the full 1970s art guide
The 1980s
Artists
- Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, taking street work into galleries.
- Julian Schnabel and the neo-expressionist revival of painting.
- Cindy Sherman, photographing herself as everybody else.
- Neville Brody, whose work for The Face changed magazine design.
- Peter Saville, designing the Factory Records sleeves.
- Barbara Kruger, using advertising's own language against it.
Styles and movements
- Neo-expressionism - big, fast, figurative painting, and very saleable.
- Memphis design: clashing colour, squiggles and laminate, from Milan in 1981.
- Postmodern architecture, quoting the past with a straight face.
- Street art and graffiti moving from New York subway to London wall.
- Early digital design, pixellated because there was no alternative.
Art and design trends
- The Apple Macintosh (1984) and desktop publishing put typesetting on a desk.
- The art market booms, and the artist becomes a brand.
- Music video becomes a design discipline of its own.
- Corporate identity work explodes as privatised industries rebrand.
- The Saatchi collection starts shaping what British galleries show.
On the walls at home
- Athena's Man and Baby poster (1987) in a great many flats.
- Laura Ashley florals at one end of the taste range, black ash and chrome at the other.
- Ragging, sponging and stencilled borders, courtesy of daytime television.
- Framed film posters, and a Ferrari on a teenager's wall.
Read the full 1980s art guide
The 1990s
Artists
- Damien Hirst, whose shark piece dates from 1991.
- Tracey Emin - Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1995) and My Bed (1998).
- Rachel Whiteread, who won the Turner Prize in 1993 for House.
- Banksy, starting out in Bristol.
- David Carson, whose Ray Gun layouts broke every typographic rule.
- The Designers Republic, behind the look of nineties electronic music.
Styles and movements
- The YBAs: conceptual, confrontational and extremely good at publicity.
- Grunge typography - layered, distressed and barely legible on purpose.
- Rave and club flyer design, printed cheap and collected anyway.
- Minimalist branding, as a reaction to eighties excess.
- Cool Britannia iconography, Union Jack included.
Art and design trends
- Sensation at the Royal Academy in 1997 puts British art on the front pages.
- Photoshop and the Mac become standard, and the studio darkroom closes.
- The web arrives and nobody knows how to design for it yet.
- Lottery money from 1994 funds galleries, including Tate Modern.
- The Turner Prize becomes an annual national argument.
On the walls at home
- IKEA prints - the same three pictures in a lot of front rooms.
- Minimalism on television, magnolia everywhere, laminate on the floor.
- Club flyers kept in a shoebox.
- Posters from magazines, folded, with the crease never coming out.
Read the full 1990s art guide
The 2000s
Artists
- Banksy, whose work goes from vandalism to auction house inside the decade.
- Antony Gormley - the Angel of the North (1998) defines the following ten years.
- Grayson Perry, who won the Turner Prize in 2003.
- Shepard Fairey, and the 2008 Hope poster.
- Olafur Eliasson - The Weather Project at Tate Modern (2003).
- Anish Kapoor, working at the scale of buildings.
Styles and movements
- Street art and stencil work, collected and then commissioned.
- Web 2.0 design: gradients, gloss, rounded corners and reflections.
- Relational and installation art - the gallery as an experience.
- Vector illustration and the beginning of flat design.
- The photo print as affordable art, sold by the metre.
Art and design trends
- Tate Modern opens in 2000 and becomes one of the most visited galleries in the world.
- Digital cameras make everyone a photographer, and photography stops being scarce.
- Print magazines start losing designers to the web.
- The Fourth Plinth programme begins in 1999 and keeps the public arguing.
- Affordable art fairs and print editions open the market to ordinary buyers.
On the walls at home
- Canvas prints of a New York skyline or a poppy field.
- Feature walls, wall stickers and vinyl lettering with a quote on it.
- Photo books and framed digital snaps instead of albums.
- Banksy reproductions - the balloon girl above the sofa.
Read the full 2000s art guide
The 2010s
Artists
- Yayoi Kusama, whose Infinity Rooms became the most photographed art in the world.
- Ai Weiwei, working as artist and dissident at once.
- Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, whose text work suits the feed perfectly.
- Kehinde Wiley, painting portraits at old-master scale.
- Es Devlin, designing stages that count as sculpture.
- Morag Myerscough, whose colour and lettering turned up on buildings everywhere.
Styles and movements
- Flat design and then material design - shadows allowed back in, cautiously.
- Immersive and instagrammable installation art.
- Millennial pink, brass, marble surfaces and one enormous plant.
- Hand lettering and the return of visible craft in branding.
- Street art fully institutional, with festivals and council murals.
Art and design trends
- Instagram becomes the main route by which people see art, and shows get designed for it.
- Free entry keeps British galleries among the best attended anywhere.
- Crowdfunding and print-on-demand let illustrators sell direct.
- Every company rebrands to a simplified sans-serif logo.
- Art fairs, editions and auction records dominate the art press.
On the walls at home
- Gallery walls: a dozen small frames arranged as one big one.
- Etsy and independent illustrators selling prints direct.
- Neon signs with a slogan, and the same three houseplants.
- Everything photographed for the feed before anyone sat down.
Read the full 2010s art guide
The 2020s
Artists
- Yinka Shonibare and Lubaina Himid, both long overdue and now central.
- Beeple, whose collage sold for $69m in March 2021 and started the NFT rush.
- Refik Anadol, making data into wall-sized moving images.
- Jadé Fadojutimi and a generation of young painters collected fast.
- Thomas J Price, whose Brixton statue Reaching Out (2020) got it right.
Styles and movements
- Digital and generative art, briefly attached to NFTs and then detached again.
- AI-generated imagery, from novelty in 2022 to unavoidable by 2024.
- Maximalism: pattern, colour and clutter, after a decade of grey.
- Craft revival - ceramics, textiles and print taken seriously again.
- Immersive projected shows of Van Gogh, Monet and anyone out of copyright.
Art and design trends
- Galleries closed for long stretches in 2020 and put collections online instead.
- The NFT market peaked in 2021 and collapsed within two years.
- AI image tools raise unresolved questions about training data and illustrators' work.
- Museums reckon publicly with where their collections came from.
- Independent makers sell direct, and the high street gallery keeps shrinking.
On the walls at home
- Prints from small independent makers, bought online.
- Warm colours, textured plaster finishes and a lot of second-hand furniture.
- Digital photo frames cycling through a decade of phone pictures.
- Posters and prints back on bedroom walls, which never really stopped.
Read the full 2020s art guide
Explore the art of every decade
Every decade has its own look. The sleek lines of Art Deco in the 1920s, the bold colours of Pop Art in the 1960s, the neon and graphic shapes of the 1980s. This free decade art finder lets you search artists, movements, styles and design trends from the 1920s to the present day, or filter by era to see what defined each one.
It's useful for school projects, for planning a themed party, for choosing prints and decorations, or simply for browsing if you love art and design.
How to use the art finder
Type an artist, a style or a keyword into the search box, such as Warhol, Bauhaus or psychedelic, and the results update as you type. Or choose a decade to see its key artists, movements and trends in one place. Clear the filters at any time to start again.
Each entry gives you the essentials: who or what it is, when it was influential and why it mattered. It's a quick starting point. If something catches your eye, you'll know exactly what to look up next.
Ideas for using decade art
Themed parties: pick a decade and borrow its colours, patterns and typography for invitations, banners and table decorations. A 1920s party might use gold and black geometric shapes, while a 1970s party could use warm oranges and browns.
Decorating at home: knowing the look of a decade helps you choose wall prints, cushions and accessories that go together.
School and college work: the art finder gives students a clear overview of the movements and artists that shaped each era.
Gift ideas: if someone loves a particular period, a print or poster in that style makes a thoughtful present.
How art reflects its time
Art and design rarely appear out of nowhere. They respond to what's happening in the world. The optimism and wealth of the 1920s showed up in glamorous Art Deco. The consumer boom of the 1950s and 60s inspired Pop Art's fascination with adverts and everyday objects. The arrival of personal computers in the 1980s and 90s brought digital and pixel styles into the mainstream.
Looking at art decade by decade is a good way to understand history too. It shows what people valued, worried about and dreamed of at the time.
Spotting the style of a decade
Once you know what to look for, it's easy to place a design in its decade. Look at the colours first: muted pastels, earthy browns, bright neon or clean monochrome can each point to a particular era. Then look at shapes and lines. Geometric patterns, flowing curves, bold blocks and hand-drawn doodles all go in and out of fashion. Typography is another big clue, from elegant serif lettering to chunky bubble letters.
Use the art finder to compare two decades side by side and notice how styles react to what came before. Minimalism followed the busy designs of earlier years, and retro looks regularly come back around, which is why so much of today's design borrows from the past.
Frequently asked questions
Which decades are included? Every decade from the 1920s to the present day.
Is the information accurate? The artists, movements and dates are real, and we give years where they help.
Can I test what I've learned? Yes. Try the decade quiz or the decade trivia game.
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