The Impressionists radically challenged the conventions of artmaking, rejecting the established academic style in favor of loose brushstrokes to capture atmospheric landscapes. From Cubism to Surrealism, the modern art movements that followed continued this avant-garde sensibility, introducing radical new forms of expression such as abstract painting and conceptual sculpture. Spanning roughly 1860 to 1945, the category of Impressionist and modern art also represents some of the most expensive works ever sold at auction, including Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O) (1955) at $179.4 million, and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu Couche (1917) at $170.4 million, Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) at $120 million, and Claude Monet’s Meules (1890) at $110.7 million.
