The origin of the word Kitsch is uncertain, it may be derived from the English word “sketch" or the German “skizze".
According to Hans Reimann, the term was coined in painters` studios as an attack on the older culture.
The word has been employed by theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Hermann Broch, and Clement Greenberg, who sought to defined art and kitsch as two opposites.
For Broch, kitsch was not the same as bad art; it formed a system of its own. He argued that kitsch involved trying to achieve "beauty" instead of "truth".
According to Gillo Dorfles, the “real" kitsch aspect is to create works that represent a “false interpretation of the aesthetic trends of their age".
Kitsch as a superstructure for figurative painting was launched at the end of the 20th century by Odd Nerdrum,
a consequence of the rules that dominate art: rejection of handcraft, emphasis on aesthetic indifference and the imperative of “belonging to our time".