Neo-expressionism

also: Transavanguardia · Neue Wilden · Junge Wilde

movement late 1970s-1980s Germany Italy

Neo-expressionism emerged in the late 1970s as a reaction against the cool detachment of Conceptual and Minimal art, restoring the recognizable figure, the mythic subject, and raw emotion to painting and sculpture. Its rough, violent handling of materials and vivid color looked back to German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, and Edvard Munch, and it arrived under different names in different countries: Transavanguardia in Italy, Neue Wilden in Germany, Figuration Libre in France. Critics like Achille Bonito Oliva hailed it as a revival of European self-expression after decades of American dominance; Robert Hughes dismissed it as a capitulation to the art market. Either way, it dominated the art market into the mid-1980s, and its stars - Basquiat, Schnabel, Kiefer, Baselitz - defined the decade's taste, even as women painters were famously sidelined from its major exhibitions.

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

Defining characteristics

  • Rough, aggressive brushwork and coarse handling of materials
  • Intense subjectivity: private turmoil and mythic themes made visible
  • Recognizable imagery, especially the human figure, returning after abstraction
  • Vivid, strident color deployed for emotional impact
  • Large scale and raw, textured surfaces, sometimes on unconventional supports
  • Graffiti-like scrawl and cartoon imagery absorbed into fine art (Basquiat)

Key figures

  • Georg Baselitz (1938-2026) — German painter of violent, often inverted figures who anchored the Neue Wilden
  • Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) — German painter of vast, myth-charged landscapes built from straw, ash, and lead
  • Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) — American painter whose scrawled, word-filled figures brought street energy into the gallery
  • Julian Schnabel (b. 1951) — American painter of broken-plate canvases and the movement's celebrity
  • Francesco Clemente (b. 1952) — Neapolitan painter of dreamlike, bodily figuration in the Italian Transavanguardia

Example works

Sources

← Back to the catalog