Even for such an intensely creative time, the visual arts of the last decade before the Great War were remarkable; the period saw everything from the original New York skyscrapers and Frank Lloyd Wright’s first masterpieces to the early development of the comic strip.  But the greatest revolutions were in painting, where the entire art form was being rethought.  Picasso and Braque were developing cubism, and Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich were pushing even further, into fully abstract painting.  There was an explosion of artistic movements, which were pursued with violent vigor… the British Vorticists named their journal BLAST and the Italian Futurists reveled in brawls and riots.

The First World War ended much of this artistic ferment, and ended the lives of some of the most talented of the young artists.

Sculpture.Latin America.
==Mar.13 > The Christ of the Andes statue is formally dedicated as a symbol of Chilean-Argentinean friendship

Painting.France.
==Apr.--- > Picasso permanently settles in Paris - Picasso’s Rose Period, late 1904 to 1906

Painting.Spain.
==May.11 > Salvador Dali is born in Figueres in Catalonia to a prosperous notary

Sculpture.France.
==1904 > Rodin’s The Thinker (sculpted in 1882) is displayed in public for the first time, in London and Paris

Architecture.United States.
==1904 > Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building is completed, in Buffalo
==1904 > The Flatiron Building is completed - the first New York City skyscraper, with 22 stories
 

Cartoons.United States.
==Oct.15 > The first appearance of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip, in the New York Herald

Photography.United States.
==Nov.--- > Stieglitz opens gallery 291 in New York City, as a venue for serious photography

Painting.Germany.
==1905 > Die Brucke group forms in Dresden - ~the rise of German expressionism

France.
==1905-1908 > Art Deco style emerges in France

Architecture.Spain.
==1904-1907 > Gaudi designs the art nouveau Casa Mila in Barcelona
 

Painting.Germany.
==1906 > Munich’s pseudo-avant-garde Secession exhibition rejects all nine paintings submitted by Kandinsky
 

Painting.France.
==spring > Picasso paints the proto-cubist Desmoiselles d'Avignon - the work is not publicly displayed for years

Painting.Mexico.
==Jul.06 > Frida Kahlo is born in Coyoacán

Painting.France.
==fall > A Cézanne retrospective exhibit is held in Paris
==1907 > The first biography of Vincent Van Gogh is published
==1907 > Rousseau paints The Snake Charmer

Painting.Britain.
==1907 > John Singer Sargent stops painting portraits

Cartoons.United States.
==1907 > Rube Goldberg begins his career as a cartoonist
==1907 > The first daily comic strip, Mutt and Jeff, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle

Photography.France.
==1907 > The Lumière brothers introduce Autochrome, the first viable color photograph process

Architecture.United States.
==1907 > Union Station is completed in Washington, DC

Painting.France.
==1908 > Picasso and Braque begin groping toward analytic cubism
==1908 > Picasso gives a rowdy banquet for Rousseau - the guests include Apollinaire, Braque, Vlaminck, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Painting.Austria-Hungary.
==1908 > Klimt’s painting The Kiss is completed

Painting.France.United States.
==1908 > The Fauves’ works are first shown in America

Photography.Britain.
==1908 > The Linked Ring group breaks up over the rising American influence on photography

Architecture.United States.
==1908 > The opening of the Singer Building in New York City, the tallest structure built to that date - in 1967, it becomes the tallest structure demolished to that date
 

Italy.
==Feb.20 > The Italian Futurist movement is launched with a frenzied manifesto published in Paris

Painting.France.
==summer > Picasso develops analytical cubism, using faceting in portraits and landscapes
==1909 > Matisse paints The Dance

Architecture.United States.
==1909 > Frank Lloyd Wright completes the Robie House, in Chicago (commissioned 1906; begun 1908)

Architecture.Germany.
==1909-1912 > Behrens builds the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin, the first steel and glass building
 

Painting.France.
==Sep.04 > Rousseau dies, after having painted The Dream earlier in the year

Painting.United States.
==Sep.29 > Winslow Homer dies in Maine

Architecture.United States.
==Nov.27 > Penn Station opens in New York City as the world’s largest terminal

Painting.Germany.
==1910 > Kandinsky begins painting abstract forms in Munich, and writes Concerning the Spiritual in Art (published 1912)

Painting.France.
==1910 > Picasso and Braque are collaborating “like mountaineers roped together,” exploring analytic cubism

Painting.France.Russia.
==1910-1914 > Marc Chagall lives in Paris, developing his style

Cartoons.United States.
==1910 > Dell Publishing begins printing the proto-comic book The Funnies

Photography.Britain.
==1910 > The first exhibit of the London Salon, which becomes a permanent venue for photography

Sculpture.Africa.
==1910 > In West Africa, Frobenuis discovers Yoruban sculptures

Architecture.Germany.
==1910 > Berg builds the Jahrhunderthalle in Breslau, using reinforced concrete
 

Painting.Germany.
==Dec.18 > Kandinsky and Marc present the first Blue Rider Exhibition in Munich, only a couple weeks after they split from New Artists’ Association
==1911 > A Munich artists’ petition protests French influences - ~the Munich art scene is in decline

Painting.France.
==1911 > Cubism becomes a public phenomena with an exhibit at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris... without Picasso or Braque
==1911 > The term "Expressionism" is first used for the Fauves

Painting.France.Russia.
==1911 > Chagall paints I and My Village

Architecture.United States.
==1911 > Frank Lloyd Wright designs his home Taliesin, in Wisconsin

Painting.Low Countries.
==1911-1912 > Mondrians’s Flowering Apple Tree series of paintings moves into abstraction
 

Painting.United States.
==Jan.28 > Jackson Pollock is born in Cody, Wyoming

Painting.France.
==Sep.--- > Picasso and Braque are replacing analytical with synthetic cubism

Painting.Britain.
==Oct.--- > A post-Impressionist exhibit at the Grafton Galleries jolts the British art world - after viewing it, the respected art critic Sir Claude Philips throws down his catalogue and stomps on it

Painting.France.
==1912 > Marcel Duchamp paints Nude Descending a Staircase

Sculpture.Italy.
==1912 > Boccioni sculpts the Futurist Development of a Bottle in Space
 

Architecture.United States.
==Feb.03 > Grand Central Station in New York City is opened to the public

Painting.United States.
==Feb.17 > The Armoury Show opens in New York City - modern European art enters America - conservative critics are horrified: Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase is called an “explosion in a shingle factory”

Architecture.United States.
==Apr.24 > The Woolworth Building is completed in New York City - at 55 stories (792 ft), it remains the world’s tallest until 1930

Painting.United States.
==May.13 > The anti-porn zealot Anthony Comstock demands that the traditional painting September Morn be removed from public view in Chicago

Photography.United States.Austria-Hungary.
==Oct.22 > Photographer Robert Capa is born in Budapest, as André Friedmann

Painting.France.
==Dec.10 > The stolen Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence
==1913 > Marcel Duchamp starts creating "readymades"

Painting.Russia.
==1913 > In Russia, Malevich begins creating abstract geometric patterns in a style he calls Suprematism

Sculpture.Italy.
==1913 > Boccioni's sculpts the Futurist Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
 

1914
Architecture.United States.
==Feb.12 > Construction of the Lincoln Memorial is begun in Washington, DC

Painting.Britain.
==Mar.--- > The first exhibit of the London Group of artists is held - ~the avant-garde Vorticist movement is taking shape in Britain

Painting.Germany.
==Apr.--- > Blue Rider Group members Macke and Klee visit Tunisia, and are inspired to begin using colors boldly

Painting.Britain.
==Jul.02 > The first issue of the Voriticist magazine BLAST is published

Painting.France.Russia.
==1914 > Chagall paints The Praying Jew

United States.
==1914 > The American Institute of Graphic Arts is established

Photography.United States.
==1914 > Young Dorothea Lange gets her first camera

Photography.Germany.
==1914 > Leica produces the first 35mm still cameras

Architecture.United States.
==1914 > A crazed servant kills Frank Lloyd Wright’s lover and six others, and burns Taliesin, Wright’s rural home