I would say that Modernism was a reaction both to the industrialization of the previous Industrial Revolution and urbanization and it, for example in Nietzsche gives more importance to a person's "will to be" rather than facts for example and also it was influenced by the destruction of the first world war and also by the writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud with the latter emphasis of the importance of basic drives to explain human behaviour and Marx's admiration for the conscious participation of the working class in their work rather than being seen merely as a cog in a big wheel as they may have been depicted in the writings of the industrial Revolution.
