Expressionism
Description
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Founding leader of Die Brücke in Dresden whose angular, jagged brushwork and harsh palettes captured the alienation, eroticism, and anxiety of early 20th-century German city life.
Wassily Kandinsky
Co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter in Munich whose spiritual theories and vibrant, symphonic color harmonies propelled Expressionism toward non-objective abstraction.
Franz Marc
Co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter known for symbolic, crystalline animal paintings that assigned mystical meanings to pure color: blue for spirituality, yellow for femininity, and red for matter.
Emil Nolde
Expressionist master and Die Brücke member whose raw, glowing watercolors and religious canvases explored primal ecstasy, storm-tossed landscapes, and intense emotional fervor.
Egon Schiele
Leading figure of Viennese Expressionism known for psychologically searing, distorted self-portraits and nudes characterized by sinuous, nervous contour lines.
Max Beckmann
Independent Expressionist master who processed the trauma of World War I into complex, allegorical triptychs and stark urban tableaux exposing societal hypocrisy.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
In 1905, four architecture students in Dresden led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner founded the Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge), taking their name from a passage in Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' which describes humanity as a bridge toward a higher future.
↗ Source: moma.org
In 1937, the Nazi regime confiscated over 20,000 Expressionist artworks from German museums and displayed hundreds of them in the notorious 'Degenerate Art' (Entartete Kunst) exhibition in Munich to ridicule modern art.
↗ Source: britannica.com
