The course will consider some of the chief artistic developments across the broad span of Europe from World War I to the immediate aftermath of World War II. We will study the widespread experimentation with abstraction, constructivism, and non-objectivity stimulated by cubism; the comparably conservative, realistic, classic, and neo-romantic trends that developed in response and reaction to cubism; artists' work in the areas of theater, film, and design; the iconoclastic, fantastic, and often politicized movements of the new avant-gardes; and the careers of artists who emerged in the aftermath of World War II. We will focus not just on major figures, but also on the group enterprises and wide range of international interaction in that period. We will also examine how the art was both rooted in and challenged by the exceeedingly difficult historical, political, and economic circumstances of those years.