Art History Words and Terms Beginning With P

Shapes in a painterly composition aren't sharply defined and the whole piece may be showing obvious brushwork.

Papier collé is a kind of collage composed only of glued papers on a flat surface, usually a canvas or paper, sometimes in combination with depicted images.

Papier mâché is a French term that means "chewed paper."

The blending of overlapping planes into one another.

A principle of art - and probably of the universe itself - pattern means the repetition of an element (or elements) in a work.

In the context of drawing or painting, perspective is the technique an artist uses to create the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface.

Photocollage is a combination of cut-and-pasted photographs surrounded by depicted imagery, drawn or in watercolor, assembled by amateur artists, usually middle to upper class young ladies who had access to a plentiful supply of visiting cards, all the rage during the mid to late nineteenth century.

Photomontage is a specific kind of collage made of primarily of photographs from newspapers, magazines and similar media.

Pompier Art or L'art Pompier - Definition of Pompier Art

Post Painterly Abstraction is a term invented by the American art critic Clement Greenberg for his exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964.

Proportion is a principle of art that describes the size, location or amount of one element to another (or to the whole) in a work.

The term Proto-Renaissance, first coined by the Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt, denotes the period in Northern Italian art from (roughly) 1150-1400.

Putti are those plump little naked boys with wings that one often sees in Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque and Rococo art.

Pysanky are those glorious Ukrainian Easter eggs.