Post-World War I European Classicism

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In 1917 Pablo Picasso travelled to Rome to design the ballet Parade and soon afterwards was painting heavy, calm women modelled like antique statues, as in Three Women at the Spring (1921). After the First World War many artists who had fractured form before 1914 turned to solid figures, clear outlines and Mediterranean subjects, and the poet Jean Cocteau collected his essays under the title Le Rappel à l'ordre (1926), “the call to order”.

The mood took different national forms. André Derain and Gino Severini revisited Old Master techniques, and Fernand Léger painted monumental, machine-smooth nudes in Le Grand Déjeuner (1921). In Italy the journal Valori Plastici championed tradition, and the Novecento group, including Mario Sironi, sought a modern classicism that became closely tied to the Fascist regime. In sculpture, Aristide Maillol and Arturo Martini gave the tendency weight. Look for stillness, idealised bodies and echoes of antiquity.