Expressionism was a dominant style in Germany in the years immediately following World War I, where it suited the postwar atmosphere of cynicism, alienation, and disillusionment. The theme of individual alienation, as represented in this image would persist throughout the 20th century, captivating Expressionist artists as a central feature of modern life. Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf, Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors. Expressed in his painting The Scream (1893), his emphasis upon intense inner experience set the path for Expressionism, defined by Ernst Kirchner as mirroring "the sensations of a man of our time.". In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements. Whereas the Impressionists sought to express the majesty of nature and the human form through paint, the Expressionists, according to Matějček, sought to express their feelings about what they saw. Expressionism first emerged in 1905, when a group of four German students guided by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner founded the Die Brücke (the Bridge) group in the city of Dresden. Egon Schiele was an Austrian Art Nouveau painter. The representation of the artist's emotional response to a scene would form the basis of the Expressionists' artistic interpretations. Here, the sun-dappled hillside reveals a keen interest in contrasts of light and dark as well as movement and stillness, all major themes throughout his oeuvre. His most famous works have a mystical quality and make use of linear and pictorial symbols. I stopped and leaned against the fence...shivering with fear. The classic phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to 1920 and spread throughout Europe. The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. Although Munch did not observe the scene as rendered in his painting, The Scream evokes the jolting emotion of the encounter and exhibits a general anxiety toward the tangible world. 1910, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat (1909), The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation and judgment of art. Expressionism had its most direct impact in Germany and continued to shape the country's art for decades after the First World War. Its example would later powerfully inform many individuals, and groups such as: Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and The School of London. Art was now meant to come forth from. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor proved particularly influential to the Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings. Expressionism, properly speaking, is a modernist art movement that originated in Germany before World War I. The roots of the German Expressionist school lay in the works of Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor, each of whom in the period 1885–1900 evolved a highly personal painting style. Many of their works express frustration, anxiety, disgust, discontent, violence, and generally a sort of frenetic intensity of feeling in response to the ugliness, the crude banality, and the possibilities and contradictions that they discerned in modern life. By Peter Jelavich, Heather Hess, Starr Figura, By Roberta Smith / National Galleries Scotland - Expressionism, expressionism - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Its main objective was to represent reality from a personal perspective, subjecting it to radical distortions for “expressive” effect in order to evoke emotional states or ideas. The New York Times / Die Bruke artists' used bold colors to depicts gritty scene of city life. On a walk he took with two friends at sunset, Edvard Munch described how "suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood .. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. Through their confrontation with the urban world of the early-20. Street, Berlin. In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in late-19th-century art. February 26, 2009, By Grace Glueck / Kokoschka's emotional representation is emblematic of the Expressionist style. The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement was influenced by the highly emotional tenets of Expressionism, while the Neo-Expressionists emerged in Germany and then in the United States reprising the earlier Expressionist style. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Everyone who renders directly and honestly whatever drives him to create is one of us. These artists used the expressive possibilities of colour and line to explore dramatic and emotion-laden themes, to convey the qualities of fear, horror, and the grotesque, or simply to celebrate nature with hallucinatory intensity. The Swiss-born painter Paul Klee worked in a variety of styles, including Expressionism, geometric abstraction, and collage. 1913, MoMA: Erich Heckel. While his style was reminiscent of Van Gogh, Klimt, Munch and others, Schiele shaped the female form in a uniquely non-representational manner, often twisting the body and face, making him an early proponent of European Expressionism. Which actor from the original television series appeared in the 2009 film. More specifically, Expressionism as a distinct style or movement refers to a number of German artists, as well as Austrian, French, and Russian ones, who became active in the years before World War I and remained so throughout much of the interwar period. Answer to: How did Expressionism start? "Expressionism Movement Overview and Analysis". The painter Max Beckmann, the graphic artist Käthe Kollwitz, and the sculptors Ernst Barlach and Wilhelm Lehmbruck, all of Germany, also worked in Expressionist modes. He is especially known for his portraits, landscapes, and studies of flayed meat. Woodcuts, with their thick jagged lined and harsh tonal contrasts, were one of the favourite media of the German Expressionists. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. By signing up, you'll get thousands of step-by-step solutions to your homework questions. While certain artists rejected Expressionism, others continued to expand its innovative art and style. Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German Expressionist artists that banded together in Dresden in 1905. The colorful background and concentrated gestures of the figures represent the couple as "closed personalities so full of tension," as the artist once called them. These two groups became the foundation of the German Expressionism movement. Throughout his artistic career, Munch focused on scenes of death, agony, and anxiety in distorted and emotionally charged portraits, all themes and styles that would be adopted by the Expressionists. The group included Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl. Max Beckmann was a German artist, writer, and philosopher commonly associated with the Expressionist movement of the early twentieth century. Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. The artist accomplishes this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." Other forms of the movement developed in France, Paris, and Austria. The Expressionists were influenced by various artists and sources including E… Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. It remained popular during the post-war Weimar Republic, extending to architecture, literature, theatre, dance, film and music. Expressionist artists sought to “express” psychological experiences rather than physical facts. Since then, Expressionism became a widely recognized form of modern art. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. Constituting a link between Post-Impressionism and the burgeoning Expressionist movements, Kandinsky's canvas became the emblem of the expressive possibilities embraced by the Munich avant-garde. Chaim Soutine was a Jewish Expressionist painter whose textured, impasto style was influential for later gestural painters. The group, which includes artists such as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Emil Nolde, had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century and the creation of Expressionism. Nolde was a Danish-German painter and printmaker who was affiliated with the groups Die Brucke, the Berlin Secession, and Der Blaue Reiter. The artists belonging to the group known as Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) are sometimes regarded as Expressionists, although their art is generally lyrical and abstract, less overtly emotional, more harmonious, and more concerned with formal and pictorial problems than that of Die Brücke artists. The works of Die Brücke artists stimulated Expressionism in other parts of Europe. Abstract Expressionism, broad movement in American painting that began in the late 1940s and became a dominant trend in Western painting during the 1950s. The second and principal wave of Expressionism began about 1905, when a group of German artists led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner formed a loose association called Die Brücke (“The Bridge”). The style originated principally in Germany and Austria. There were a number of groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Käthe Kollwitz's prints and sculptures depict the tragedies of war and the plights of the poor and sick in the first half of the twentieth century.

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