One of the most remarkable things about Pablo Picasso's career is that he had so many different stages and styles, and he first gained recognition for his "Blue Period" in the first decade of the twentieth century. Named for the predominant hue Picasso employed, these post-impressionist paintings owed much to Post-Impressionists, like Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh, as well as the Renaissance Spanish master El Greco. This work was completely different from Picasso's later abstract and cubist works.

Faith Ringgold, born in 1930, taught art at the high school and college levels, and sought in her own work to blur the lines between craft and high art. Her main medium has been traditionally-made quilts, which feature high art images that reflect the African-American experience. Ringgold's work has been important for creating more widespread appreciation of both African-American folk art and professional artists.

Marc Chagall was born in Belarus in 1887, and worked in France and the Soviet Union, before having to leave for the United States after the Nazi occupation of Paris. Chagall had worked in various modernist styles, like cubism and expressionism, and his background made him even more prominent after World War II. Remarkably, Chagall was commissioned to create replacement stained glass windows in French churches that had been damaged by German bombing.

Cezanne's desire to play with shapes, colors, and form in both his still-life and landscape paintings was influential to the artists who developed cubism in the early twentieth century. The cubists' use of geometry and mathematics have a clear forerunner in Cezanne's examination of the various geometric shapes present in his still-life paintings. Additionally, Cezanne's ability to convey an image that was not perfectly realistic showed the possibilities in abstract art.

Pop Art exploded in the 1950s and 1960s, with artists like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein producing works that touched on mass cultural themes and used new techniques of mass production. Pop Artists were influenced by the questions raised by Abstract Expressionism about the nature of art, but also were tuned into popular culture in a way the previous generation of artists hadn't been.

Jean-Michel Basquiat blossomed in the New York art scene in the early 1980s, thanks to his fusion of social commentary, African-American culture, and street art in his paintings. Using abstract expressionist forms instead of realistic depictions, Basquiat's work is often disturbing and strange, with words and icons illuminating the image. Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in 1987, cutting short his life and career at an early age and increasing the rarity of his existing works.

Robert Rauschenberg was a painter who helped presage the Pop Art movement when he first entered the art scene in the 1950s. His particular genre, which he called "combines," mixed Abstract Expressionist painting with found object art and photography to create paintings with sculptural elements coming out of them. These combines' use of commercial art and images from popular culture became cornerstones of the Pop Art aesthetic.

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was a famous photographer and technical innovator who developed a process of developing film known as "the Zone System" and used the newest photographic technology of his time. The ability of Adams and his technology was seen through his many photographs of National Parks, particularly in the American West. Adams' photographs were most well known for their sharp focus and deep shading in black and white.

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch artist who belonged to the artistic movement known as De Stijl ("The Style" in Dutch.) The principles of De Stijl were to reduce artistic forms to their simplest, most functional forms. Mondrian's specific form, which he developed in Paris between the World Wars and called "Neo-plasticism," featured mostly white canvases, which were bisected at various parts by perpendicular black lines and had fields of color only in the three primary colors.

Wassily Kandinsky was the most influential expressionist of the early twentieth century. Kandinsky's style, which was dominated by abstract forms, expressive lines, and flowing brushstrokes, would prove to be immensely popular among fellow artists, while his theoretical writing, which connected art to music, also proved influential. Kandinsky had to flee both the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Nazis in the 1930s because of his controversial artwork.