#realism

• Airbrushing — An artistic technique of painting or decoration based on using the airbrush, through which images are created by the controlled spraying of paint onto various surfaces (canvas, car bodies, walls, skin). It allows obtaining superior photorealistic effects and extremely smooth transitions between hues.
• Aitmatov — A proper onomastic name of universal resonance, representing the surname of the famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov (1928–2008), a monumental figure of 20th-century Russian and world literature. Within the history of culture and philology, his works (such as The White Ship, Farewell, Gulsary!, or The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years) are structurally recognized for deeply weaving psychological realism with ancestral myths, Asian legends of the Central Asian steppes, and subtle critiques of dehumanizing bureaucracy.
• Allogism — A philosophical attitude, movement, or artistic device that denies the role of logical thought and reason in knowledge, holding that absolute truth can only be approached through intuition, faith, or mystical experience. In literary avant-garde (such as Dadaism or Surrealism), it represents an intentional technique of breaking natural syntactic and logical connections to release the subconscious.
• Andersen Nexø — The pseudonym and extended official name of Martin Andersen Nexø, a world-renowned Danish writer, considered one of the pioneers of proletarian and social literature in Europe. His monumental works, such as 'Pelle the Conqueror' and 'Ditte, Daughter of Man', offer a realistic structural fresco of the working-class struggle at the beginning of the 20th century, having a major impact on modern social prose.
• Animalier — Representing or having animals as its main subject; a painter, sculptor, or visual artist specializing in the faithful, expressive, and detailed depiction of fauna in their works. The term also applies to the artistic genre dedicated to animals, a movement that flourished greatly in 19th-century sculpture and painting, emphasizing anatomy and realism.
• Anti-melodrama — A literary work, theatrical play, or cinematographic screenplay that deliberately rejects the conventions, clichés, and excessive pathos specific to classical melodrama; a dramatic creation focused on raw realism, psychological sobriety, and moral ambiguity. In a structural sense, it eliminates the simplistic dichotomy between good and evil and refuses happy or artificial endings, debunking exaggerated emotions.
• Anti-realism — A philosophical stance or theoretical current opposing realism, denying the existence of an objective reality independent of our conceptual schemes, language, or cognitive processes. In the philosophy of science, it argues that theories do not describe absolute truths about unobservable entities but are merely useful instruments, whereas in art and literature, it represents the intentional rejection of mimicking reality in favor of surrealism, abstraction, or constructivism.
• Anti-romantic — Opposed to romanticism, the romantic spirit, or excessive sentimentalism; characterized by realism, pragmatism, critical lucidity, and irony. In the history of arts and literature, the term describes writers, works, or cultural movements (such as Parnassianism, naturalism, or early modernism) that reject idealization, melancholy, and escape into fantasy, instead promoting an objective, rational, and direct representation of the human condition.
• Anti-romantic — The feminine form of antiromantic; a woman, literary work, attitude, or cultural orientation that opposes romanticism, rejecting excessive sentimentalism, idealization, and escape into fantasy. In a critical context, it characterizes literary and artistic manifestations structured on pragmatism, lucidity, raw realism, and irony, aiming for a direct and rational representation of reality.
• Appollinaire — An alternative spelling variant (often encountered as a typographical error or historical transliteration form) for Guillaume Apollinaire, the famous 20th-century French poet, writer, and art critic. A prominent figure of the cultural avant-garde, he is globally recognized for inventing the calligram (structural visual poetry) and for his foundational role in theorizing Cubism and defining the term Surrealism.
• Arp — A German surname, famous in art history due to Jean Arp (Hans Arp), a French-German sculptor, painter, and poet, co-founder of the Dada movement in Zürich in 1916. In astronomy, it refers to Halton Arp and his 'Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies'.
• Artaud — A surname of French origin, made famous in universal culture by Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), an influential 20th-century writer, poet, essayist, and theater theorist. He is the creator of the revolutionary concept 'Theater of Cruelty' (Théâtre de la Cruauté), an avant-garde aesthetic doctrine that proposed abandoning classical literary text in favor of a physical, visceral, and ritualistic scenic language designed to shatter the spectator's consciousness and release subconscious forces.
• Astafiev — A surname of Russian origin, notably borne by Viktor Astafiev (1924–2001), a renowned Soviet and Russian writer and novelist, laureate of multiple state prizes. His literary work, marked by a harsh and deeply human realism, reflects his tragic frontline experiences during World War II, as well as the rugged life of peasants in Siberian regions (as seen in the novels 'Cursed and Killed' or 'The Tsar-Fish').
• Austen — A surname of Anglo-Saxon origin, universally recognized in cultural history to designate Jane Austen (1775–1817), one of the most celebrated and influential novelists in English and world literature, author of 'Pride and Prejudice'. The name can also refer to various historical figures or geographical locations.
• Automatist — As a noun, it designates an engineer or technician specialized in the field of automatics, responsible for implementing and maintaining autonomous control systems. As an adjective, the term describes an artistic movement, a creative method, or a follower of surrealism (specifically the Canadian 'Les Automatistes' school) emphasizing pure psychic automatism, generating pictorial or literary artworks directly from subconscious impulses.
• Automatist — As a noun, it designates a female engineer or technician specialized in automatics, responsible for designing and maintaining autonomous control systems. As an adjective, it represents the feminine motion for the artistic movement or creative method based on pure psychic automatism, specific to the surrealist movement (such as 'Les Automatistes' school), where the composition is directly guided by subconscious impulses.
• Avant-gardism — A generic term designating the totality of radical artistic, literary, and social movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Constructivism). Avangardism is characterized by an anti-academic spirit of revolt, the absolute negation of tradition, the use of eccentric formal experimentation, and the desire to fuse art with everyday life through often provocative acts.