Fauve artists used pure, brilliant colour aggressively applied straight from the paint tubes to create a sense of an explosion on the canvas. They branded the work of almost all Expressionists as degenerate and forbade them to exhibit or publish and eventually even to work. Though these groups were short lived, each one had a monumental influence on Expressionism—a movement that was not officially established until Expressionism continued to serve as the dominant artistic force in Germany following World War I.
Key interests among them were the aesthetics of primitivism and spiritualism, as well as growing trends in Fauvism and Cubism, which led Kandinsky, chief among the Expressionist artists, to experiment more with abstract art.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Klimt's lavish mode of rendering his subjects in a bright palette, elaborately patterned surfaces, and elongated bodies was a step toward the exotic colors, gestural brushwork, and jagged forms of the later Expressionists. Klimt was a mentor to painter Egon Schiele , and introduced him to the works of Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh , among others, at an exhibition of their work in In addition to Kandinsky, the group included Franz Marc , Paul Klee , and August Macke , among others, all of whom made up the loosely associated group.
The term "Expressionism" is thought to have been coined in by Czech art historian Antonin Matejcek, who intended it to denote the opposite of Impressionism.
Whereas the Impressionists sought to express the majesty of nature and the human form through paint, the Expressionists, according to Matejcek, sought only to express inner life, often via the painting of harsh and realistic subject matter. They depicted scenes of city dwellers, prostitutes, and dancers in the city's streets and nightclubs, presenting the decadent underbelly of German society.
In works such as Kirchner 's Street, Berlin , they emphasized the alienation inherent to modern society and the loss of spiritual communion between individuals in urban culture; fellow city dwellers are distanced from one another, acting as mere commodities, as in the prostitutes at the forefront of Kirchner's composition. The group was similarly united by a reductive and primitive aesthetic, a revival of older media and medieval German art, in which they used graphic techniques such as woodblock printing to create crude, jagged forms.
The group published a woodcut broadsheet in , called Programme , to accompany their first exhibition. It summarized their break with prevailing academic traditions calling for a freer, youth-oriented aesthetic. Their name came from a quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra that states, "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
The artists of Der Blaue Reiter group shared an inclination towards abstraction, symbolic content, and spiritual allusion. They sought to express the emotional aspects of being through highly symbolic and brightly colored renderings.
Their name emerged from the symbol of the horse and rider, derived from one of Wassily Kandinsky's paintings; for Kandinsky, the rider symbolized the transition from the tangible world into the spiritual realm and thus acted as a metaphor for artistic practice.
For other members such as Franz Marc, Paul, Klee, and Auguste Macke, this notion became a central principle for transcending realistic depiction and delving into abstraction.
Although Der Blaue Reiter never published a manifesto, its members were united by their aesthetic innovations, which were influenced by medieval and primitivist art forms, Cubism , and Fauvism. However, the group itself was short-lived; with the outbreak of World War I in , Franz Marc and Auguste Macke were drafted into German military service and were killed soon after.
The Russian members of the group - Wassily Kandinsky , Alexej von Jawlensky , and others - were all forced to return home. Der Blaue Reiter dissolved immediately thereafter. Expressionism's elasticity has meant that many artists beyond Germany's borders have been identified with the style.
Georges Rouault , the French artist sometimes described as an Expressionist, may have influenced the Germans, rather than the other way around. He learned his vivid use of color and distortion of form from Fauvism, and, unlike his German Expressionist counterparts, Rouault expressed an affinity for his Impressionist predecessors, particularly for the work of Edgar Degas.
He is well known for his devotion to religious subjects, and particularly for his many depictions of the crucifixion, rendered in rich color and heavy layers of paint.
The Russian-French Jewish artist Marc Chagall drew upon currents from Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism to create his own brand of Expressionism in which he often depicted dreamy scenes of his Belarusian hometown, Vitebsk. While in Paris during the height of the modernist avant-garde , Chagall developed a visual language of eccentric motifs: "ghostly figures floating in the sky, the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down.
He never associated his work with a specific movement, and considered his repertoire to be a vocabulary of images meaningful to himself, but they inspired many, including the Surrealists.
Pablo Picasso remarked in the s, "When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. Chaim Soutine , the Russian-Jewish, Paris-based painter, was a major proponent of the development of Parisian Expressionism.
He synthesized elements from Impressionism, the French Academic tradition, and his own personal vision into an individualized technique and version of the style.
The artist's expressive style has proved highly influential on subsequent generations. Austrian artists such as Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele , were inspired by German Expressionism, but interpreted the style in their individual and personalized manners never forming an official association like the Germans. Kokoschka and Schiele sought to express the decadence of modern Austria through similarly expressive representations of the human body; by sinuous lines, garish colors, and distorted figures, both artists imbued their subjects with highly sexual and psychological themes.
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. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became blood red.
I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired, and I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature. It depicts a horseback rider in blue galloping through the fields.
Egon Schiele painted his wife Edith Harms in , depicting her sitting on the floor, resting her cheek on her left knee. Her fiery red hair contrast strikingly with the green of her shirt.
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