Junge Wilde

also: Neue Wilde · Young Wild Ones

movement 1978-late 1980s Germany Austria

In 1978 a new generation of German-speaking painters turned against the cool dominance of minimal and conceptual art with loud, fast, figurative painting. Critics called them the Junge Wilde ('young wild ones'), or Neue Wilde - the German counterpart of Italy's Transavanguardia, France's Figuration Libre, and American neo-expressionism. Working in loose groups in Berlin, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, they painted in bright, intense colors with quick, broad brushstrokes, reviving the figure, the self-portrait, and the city scene with raw, unembarrassed energy. Their teacher and catalyst was the Berlin painter Karl Horst Hödicke. Breakthrough exhibitions of the early 1980s made their aggressive subjectivity the face of the return to painting that dominated the decade, until the market cooled on it late in the 1980s. The term later migrated into German political journalism, where it names any group challenging established authority.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Bright, intense color and quick, broad brushwork
  • Figuration revived: bodies, self-portraits, and urban scenes
  • Deliberate subjectivity and emotional overstatement as a stance against cool minimalism
  • Large-scale canvases painted fast and gesturally
  • Group identity: gallery collectives in Berlin, Cologne, and Düsseldorf
  • Brash, provocative imagery drawn from nightlife and popular culture

Key figures

  • Karl Horst Hödicke (b. 1938) — Berlin professor and painter whose expressive idiom shaped the younger group
  • Rainer Fetting (b. 1949) — Leading Berlin painter of the movement, known for wall and figure subjects
  • Helmut Middendorf (b. 1953) — Berlin painter of electric night scenes and stage imagery
  • Salomé (b. 1954) — Berlin painter of vivid figuration, a central figure of the Neue Wilde
  • Jörg Immendorff (1945-2007) — Düsseldorf painter whose Café Deutschland cycle joined the style to political allegory

Example works

  • Café Deutschland (series) — Jörg Immendorff (1977-1982)
  • Stage 2 — Helmut Middendorf (1980)
  • Van Gogh and the Wall (series) — Rainer Fetting (1977-1978)

Sources

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