Expressionism

Lore & Background

Expressionism is a modernist movement that began in Northern Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, initially in poetry and painting. Its defining characteristic is the presentation of the world from a purely subjective viewpoint, deliberately distorting reality to evoke emotions or ideas. Rather than depicting physical reality, expressionist artists aim to convey the meaning of emotional experience. The movement developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War and remained popular during the Weimar Republic, especially in Berlin. It extended across many art forms, including architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film, and music. Paris became a hub for a group of expressionist artists, many of Jewish origin, known as the School of Paris. After World War II, figurative expressionism continued to influence artists and styles globally. The term is sometimes associated with angst. Historically, older painters like Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are occasionally called expressionist, though the label mainly applies to twentieth-century works. The movement’s emphasis on individual and subjective perspective is seen as a reaction against positivism and styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism. The word "expressionist" was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, but its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in Paris in 1901 by Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called "Expressionismes." Alternatively, the term was coined by Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of Impressionism, describing an artist who wishes to express themselves by rejecting immediate perception and building on complex psychic structures. Important precursors include philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, playwrights August Strindberg and Frank Wedekind, poet Walt Whitman, novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, painters Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and James Ensor, and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In 1905, a group of four German artists led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner formed Die Brücke in Dresden, arguably the founding organization for German Expressionism. In 1911, a similar group formed Der Blaue Reiter in Munich, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and August Macke. The term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though mainly a German movement initially, most precursors were not German, and the movement

Reader's Guide

Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period, including Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism and Dadaism. The movement developed in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and it marked its distance from traditions through its rejection of the ideology of realism. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon and German philosopher Walter Benjamin, though a difference noted is that Expressionism does not shun the violently unpleasant effect. After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst, and while mainly applied to 20th-century works, older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist in a historical sense.

Did You Know?

• Important precursors include the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.