The paper considers issues of interpretation of the oeuvre of the Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli in the context of the theory of modernism. Special attention is paid to the problem of correlation of Fuseli’s artistic strategies with the «Storm and Stress» movement and erotic imagery in his work. The author explores the nature of populist techniques in the work of the British artist and his contemporaries, identifying the features of his concept of art. The article highlights the main lines of convergence of the Fuseli’s art with the modernist paradigm - the discovery of the unconscious, formalistic experiments, intellectualization of art. The author concludes that the male-female opposition, typical of the Storm and Stress movement, was transformed and deconstructed in Fuseli’s art as well as the stable gender identities. Erotization of art, sexualization of the set of plots and themes that are traditional for European art in Fuseli’s oeuvre leads to a rethinking of the issues of power and social relations. Fuseli's art opens up the era of modernism, paving the way for both romantic (surrealistic) and structuralist-formalistic (classicist, cubist) trends in contemporary art.