A 20th century American notion of portraying the real – or rather if not knowing the ‘real’ then the search to define what is real in society. As an art movement it recognised that many motives ought to be urban rather than rural considering most people lived in cities.
American Realism recognised that North America had become an industrial super power, and that the transition was both good and evil. The realisation gave artists a art a sense of impetus to capture it. American realism, however, was first neclassical borowing from the ancient, but soon approached modernism, and decided to stay with the present. The Ashcan School, for instance, helped create American modernism through visual art that would focus on real people over romantic and idylicised ideas of the past.
George Bellows (1882-1925) painted urban scenes in New York. Frantic chaotic representations which could be photographic snapshots if they were not also expressionistic in flavour. Another prominent American Realist was John Sloan who depicted social realism of the impoverished.
The artist that we have come to think of as the signature of American Realism is the artist Edward Hopper, who painted stark and beautiful scenes that have an air of alianation and loneliness.
You can read more about art movements here
