Henri Matisse's decorative linear style in the early 20th century best exemplifies the expressionistic spontaneity of the Fauves. Picasso's cubist drawings of about 1910 achieve a brilliant realization of the move toward fragmentation and abstraction central to Cubism. The great tradition of the graphic arts in Germany was continued by the expressionist drawings of Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Kathe Kollwitz, and Otto Dix. Paul Klee produced a great body of drawings in a wide variety of media and materials in his inventive and highly individual hieroglyphic style. Among the numerous artists who expressed social commentary and realistic tendencies in 20th-century drawing are William Gropper, Ben Shahn, Jose Clemente Orozco, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, and Andrew Wyeth.

In the 1920s, Surrealism produced automatic drawings that were spontaneous outpourings expressive of the artist's psyche. The drawings were also influenced by an interest in psychoanalysis. This technique was employed during the 1940s by the American abstract expressionists as one of many elements of their innovative achievements. Painters such as Arshile Gorky, William De Kooning, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko produced drawings of great strength and originality. Drawing is used extensively today by a wide variety of artists, from representational painters to the abstract. It is particularly important to the more architecture-oriented artists of the minimalist style and to sculptors who emphasize outdoor works on a large scale. Conceptual and post-conceptual artists rely heavily on drawings in various forms, such as diagrams and visually oriented writing, to document their ephemeral works of art.