precisionism

[pri-sizh-uh-niz-uhm]

noun

1. (sometimes initial capital letter),  a style of painting developed to its fullest in the U.S. in the 1920s, associated especially with Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler, and characterized by clinically precise, simple, and clean-edged rendering of architectural, industrial, or urban scenes usually devoid of human activity or presence.

Other Word Forms

• precisionist noun
• precisionistic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of precisionism¹

First recorded in 1955–60; precision + -ism

Example Sentences

In 1925, he moved to New York, where he helped develop a style known as “precisionism” — an idiom that sought to match the impersonal realities of the Machine Age.

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These sorts of arguments can be part of a communications strategy called "precisionism," says Hayek.

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Her excursions into Precisionism, Social Realism and Modernism were always remarkable.

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In a series of paintings from 1931-32 she adds curves — and a radiating, organic ease — to Precisionism’s often brittle, refracting geometries in a group of semiabstract paintings based on a lighthouse.

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The show is an overview of precisionism, the modern American movement that fetishized factories, ball bearings, silos and skyscrapers in an attempt to merge American realism with European abstraction.

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