The term expressionism is used to signify the use of distortion and exaggeration in the interests of emotional effect. Unlike the Impressionists, who tried to recreate an impression of the objective world, the expressionism art style was concerned with the imposition of the artists own personality, feelings and emotions onto their representation of the world. The Expressionist artists wanted to capture their emotional response to the world around them, rather then just recreating what they saw.
Expressionism is a complex and vast term that has meant different things at different times. However, when we speak of Expressionist art, we tend to think either about the artistic tendency which followed as a reaction to Impressionism in France or about the movement which emerged in Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century.
The term is so elastic that it can accommodate artists ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky. Though Van Gogh and Gauguin were active in the years slightly before what is regarded as the main period of Expressionism , they can without a doubt be regarded as Expressionist artists, who were painting the world around them not simply as it appeared to them, but from a deeply subjective, human experience.
Matisse, Van Gogh and Gauguin used expressive colours and styles of brushwork to depict emotions and experiences, moving away from realistic depictions of their subjects to how they felt and perceived them. German Expressionism art took inspiration from mysticism, the Middle Ages, primitive times and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas were immensely popular and influential at the time.
The artists attempted to escape the confines of modern middle-class life by exploring a heightened use of colour, a direct, simplified approach to form and free sexuality in their work. In the face of the increasing alienation they experienced due to the modernizing world, they sought to transcend the mundane by pursuing the spiritual value of art. They were especially influenced by their predecessor Gustav Klimt, who also had a hand in launching their careers due to exhibitions he created showcasing the best of contemporary Austrian art.
Both Expressionist artists lived in the contradictory Vienna of the late 19 th , early 20 th century, where moral repression and sexual hypocrisy played a part in the development of Expressionism art there. Schiele and Kokoschka eschewed this moral hypocrisy and portrayed topics such as death, violence, longing, and sex.
Kokoschka became known for his portraits and his capacity to reveal the inner nature of his sitters, and Schiele for his raw, almost brutally honest portrayals of aloof yet desperate sexuality. Another important artist at the time who made a great impact on the German and Austrian Expressionist scenes was the Norwegian Edvard Munch, who was well known in Vienna from Secession exhibitions and the Kunstschau.
Munch is most famous for The Scream, his painting of a figure on a bridge with a sunset behind him, letting out a hair-raising and desperate scream. Contact us. Your Benefits Join as an Artist F. Missing you Motivational. Toggle background. Schiele left Vienna in but remained in Austria, where he worked and exhibited until his death in the worldwide influenza epidemic of While certain artists rejected Expressionism, others would continue to expand upon its innovations as a style.
For example, in the s, Kandinsky transitioned to completely non-objective paintings and watercolors, which emphasized color balance and archetypal forms, rather than figurative representation.
However, Expressionism would have its most direct impact in Germany and would continue to shape its art for decades afterwards. After World War I, Expressionism began to lose impetus and fragment. The Neue Sachlichkeit New Objectivity movement developed as a direct response to the highly emotional tenets of Expressionism, while the Neo-Expressionists emerged in Germany and then in the United States much later in the 20 th century, reprising the earlier Expressionist style.
Already by , the Dada manifesto claimed, "Expressionism These artists sought, as the name suggests, an unsentimental and objective approach to artistic production.
Their naturalistic renderings of individuals and urban scenes highlighted this new aesthetic and paralleled the general attitude of practicality that characterized Weimar culture. The emergence of Georg Baselitz 's paintings of layered, vibrant colors and distorted figures in the s, and of Anselm Kiefer's images buried amidst thick impasto built up from a variety of materials on the canvas in the s, signaled an important and influential revival of the style within Germany, which would eventually culminate in a global Neo-Expressionist movement in the s.
Artists in New York City, like Julian Schnabel , also employed thick layers of paint, unnatural color palettes and gestural brushwork to hearken back to the Expressionist movement earlier in the 20 th century.
The original Expressionist movement's ideas about spirituality, primitivism, and the value of abstract art would also be hugely influential on an array of unrelated movements, including Abstract Expressionism. The Expressionists' metaphysical outlook and instinctive discomfort with the modern world impelled them to antagonistic attitudes that would continue to be characteristic of various avant-garde movements throughout the century.
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf. Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors. The Art Story. Ways to support us. Expressionism - History and Concepts Started: Key Artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Quick view Read more. Wassily Kandinsky.
A member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, and later a teacher at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky is best known for his pioneering breakthrough into expressive abstraction in His work prefigures that of the American Abstract Expressionists. Paul Klee.
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