Why expressionism emerged

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. The Swiss-born painter Paul Klee worked in a variety of styles, including Expressionism, geometric abstraction, and collage. His most famous works have a mystical quality and make use of linear and pictorial symbols.

Chaim Soutine. Chaim Soutine was a Jewish Expressionist painter whose textured, impasto style was influential for later gestural painters.

He is especially known for his portraits, landscapes, and studies of flayed meat. Max Beckmann. Max Beckmann was a German artist, writer, and philosopher commonly associated with the Expressionist movement of the early twentieth century. He abhorred the label 'Expressionism', but juxtaposed scenes from reality by layering figures, colors, and shadows.

Your Benefits Join as an Artist F. Missing you Motivational. Toggle background. History of Expressionism. Here, in Munch's most famous painting, he depicts the battle between the individual and society.

The setting of The Scream was suggested to the artist while walking along a bridge overlooking Oslo; as Munch recalls, "the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence The representation of the artist's emotional response to a scene would form the basis of the Expressionists' artistic interpretations.

The theme of individual alienation, as represented in this image would persist throughout the 20 th century, captivating Expressionist artists as a central feature of modern life. This breakthrough canvas is a deceptively simple image - a lone rider racing across a landscape - yet it represents a decisive moment in Kandinsky's developing pictorial language. 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.

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. This is the eponymous work from which the collective derived its name in The esteemed art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat commissioned this portrait by Kokoschka for their art collection.

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. As in many of his portraits, Kokoschka focuses on the inner drama of his subjects, here, using the couple's nervous hands as a focal point of their anxiety.

His rendering depicts the way the artist perceived the couple's psyche, not necessarily their physical, naturalistic appearances. Kokoschka's emotional representation is emblematic of the Expressionist style.

The swirling, abstract colors that obscure the background and emerge around them are characteristic of Kokoschka's frenetic, depthless renderings of space throughout his oeuvre. Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf. Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors. The Art Story. Ways to support us. Expressionism Started: 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. The sun began to set.