He was a member of an elite group, an avant-garde if you will.

The artist's abstract renditions became popular with avant-garde collectors.

The avant-garde sometimes push social reforms.
Igor Stravinsky is an avant-garde musician.

She is a classically-trained pianist, and avant-garde artist and poet.

Marcel Duchamp was an Avant garde artist associated with the Dadaist movement. He dismissed what he called retinal art, meant only to be considered visually. Instead, he wanted art to engage the mind.

Avant-garde is actually a military term for advance gaurd. In Art History two French painters are viewed as avant-garde, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, they chose to depict contemporary life as opposed to the Historical themes considered appropriate at the time.