Expressionism
Expressionism emerged in Germany and Austria in the first decades of the twentieth century, when groups like Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) broke with naturalism to make art answer to inner feeling rather than outward appearance. Where Impressionism recorded the world's light, Expressionism bent the world - color, form and space distorted to convey emotion, from Kirchner's jagged Berlin street scenes to the spiritual color-planes of Kandinsky and the anguished line of Egon Schiele. The mood spread through printmaking, sculpture, theatre and the cinema of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Crushed in Germany as 'degenerate art' after 1933, its subjective violence became one of modern art's deepest inheritances.
Defining characteristics
- Distorted forms and exaggerated proportions driven by emotion, not anatomy
- Non-naturalistic, often clashing color used expressively
- Agitated, visible brushwork and jagged, angular line
- Claustrophobic or tilted space that unsettles the viewer
- Themes of modern anxiety, alienation, ecstasy and the city
Key figures
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) — Founder of Die Brücke whose Berlin street scenes defined the movement's edge
- Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) — Co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter who pushed expression into abstraction
- Franz Marc (1880-1916) — Blue Rider painter of spiritually charged animals and color symbolism
- Egon Schiele (1890-1918) — Austrian master of the raw, contoured figure and psychological self-portrait
- Edvard Munch (1863-1944) — Norwegian forerunner whose anxious imagery opened the path for the movement
Example works
- The Scream — Edvard Munch (1893)
- Composition VII — Wassily Kandinsky (1913)
- The Tower of Blue Horses — Franz Marc (1913)
Sources
- Expressionism - Wikipedia encyclopedia