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Origin of modernist
Explanation
An artist who belonged to a 19th- and 20th-century art movement that rejected old ideas and styles was called a modernist. Virginia Woolf is one example of a modernist writer. The philosophy behind modernist art and writing was basically that the old Victorian ways of expressing artistic vision weren't keeping up with the changes in society. Modern industry, the growth of cities, and reactions to World War I were all factors that affected modernists' break with the old style. Modernist painters included the Impressionists (like Manet and Monet). Philosopher Immanuel Kant, psychologist Sigmund Freud, and composer Arnold Schoenberg are all also considered to be modernists.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Early in his career Noguchi was identified as a sculptor, known for modernist abstractions—enigmas in wood, stone, metals, plaster, ceramic and aluminum—that conjure totems, boulders, edifices and artifacts, while synthesizing Western and Eastern traditions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
The grass frames the foreground, and Freeman is depicted in a fuchsia dress inside a linear, glass-fronted modernist home.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026
Architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams brushed off criticism, saying that Obama himself was inspired by the chunky works of the modernist Romanian sculptor.
From Barron's ● Jun. 4, 2026
Montazeri went on to apprentice for two of Iran’s most important contemporary artists—mirrored mosaic maker Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and modernist sculptor Parviz Tanavoli.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026
At the time the photo was taken, we were living across the hall from my father’s parents in Parkway Gardens, an affordable housing project on the South Side made up of modernist apartment buildings.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
The Scott Dunn Orchestra debuted last May with a whole concert devoted to Henry Mancini, followed in November by a showcase of Hollywood’s midcentury modernists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2026
Some modernists were unaware that they lived under this climate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
The artist Robert Motherwell was a bridge between continents: at once a spokesman for the New York School and a conduit for the theories of European modernists.
From New York Times ● Oct. 3, 2023
Back then, the trial was considered an argument between fundamentalists and modernists — but there was debate.
From Salon ● May 30, 2023
These convictions, which no breath from the outside is allowed to ruffle, are deepened in the case of pensive and studious minds, like those of the leading modernists, by their own religious experience.
From Winds Of Doctrine Studies in Contemporary Opinion by Santayana, George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
