2. Emile Nolde In the early 20 th century, Expressionists was a term applied to art that expressed the emotional and spiritual preoccupations of the artist .
3. The essence of Expressionist art was the expression of inner feelings through outer forms They drew their inspiration from their own native traditions of midieval sculpture and folk or children’s art, as well as the art of other cultures, especially Africa and Oceania. Emile Nolde
4. The Expressionist movement began with the establishment of a new artist’s alliance known as Die Brücke (The Bridge), and lasted until the end of World War I, when radical Dada artists rejected all forms of Expressionism.
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8. The son of a farmer, Nolde earned enough from early paintings to pay for an art education for himself. After exposure to the Impressionists, his color pallet became brilliant and violent .
9. A member of Die Brücke for a year, Nolde left to devote himself increasingly to a personal form of Expressionist religious painting and prints.
10. In Nolde’s Last Supper, his figures are crammed into a nonexistent space with the red of their robes and the yellow of their faces flaring like torches out of the surrounding shadows.
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33. In Marc’s later work, he had begun to move toward more abstraction, but he was killed in action in World War I at the age of 36.
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36. Although he was not a Cubist, he often used some cubist techniques as a framework for his compositions .
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38. Egon Schile, only 28 when he died of the world wide influenza epidemic of 1918,was primarily encouraged by Gustav Klimt. They met in 1907, and were good friends, although Schele’s style wasn’t as decorative as Klimt’s style had been.
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40. In comparing Schiele’s and Klimt’s portrayals of death with people, we can see some of the differences between the Symbolist movement and the Expressionist movement.
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Editor's Notes
Chapter 8 : Expressionism in Germany
In the early 20th century, Expressionists was a term applied to art that expressed the emotional and spiritual preoccupations of the artist.
The essence of Expressionist art was the expression of inner feelings through outer forms They drew their inspiration from their own native traditions of midieval sculpture and folk or children’s art, as well as the art of other cultures, especially Africa and Oceania.
The Expressionist movement began with the establishment of a new artist’s alliance known as Die Brücke (The Bridge), and lasted until the end of World War I, when radical Dada artists rejected all forms of Expressionism.
Paula Modersohn-Becker At the encouragement of her parents, Paula Becker studied art in Paris and was influenced by famous Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh..
Her early paintings were landscapes, while her later works show her increasing interest in portraiture and the Expressionist movement.
In 1901, she married her older friend and mentor, Otto Modersohn. His controlling demeanor caused Modersohn-Becker to leave her husband in 1906 and move to Paris, where she died shortly after childbirth.
The son of a farmer, Nolde earned enough from early paintings to pay for an art education for himself. After exposure to the Impressionists, his color pallet became brilliant and violent .
A member of Die Brücke for a year, Nolde left to devote himself increasingly to a personal form of Expressionist religious painting and prints.
In Nolde’s Last Supper, his figures are crammed into a nonexistent space with the red of their robes and the yellow of their faces flaring like torches out of the surrounding shadows.
Nolde joined the Nazi party, but by 1934 Expressionistic art was banned as being too experimental, primitive and “un-German” Art confiscated by the Nazi government was shown in an art exhibit called “Degenerate Art”. Many of these art works were later destroyed by the Nazi government
Joining the Revolution: Die Brücke In 1905, a group of young architecture students, who wanted to be painters, formed a group to bridge, or link, all of the “revolutionary and fermenting” artistic elements of the day. By 1913, the group broke up and each artist went his own way.
The biggest inspirations for Die Br ücke were medieval German art, the French Fauves, Edvard Munch and non-Western sculpture. For them, Van Gogh was the clearest example of an artist driven by an “inner force” and “inner necessity”.
Even with individual differences, a hard Gothic angularity permeated much of their work. For subject matter, Kirchner looked at contemporary life…he recorded the streets and inhabitants of the cities and the bohemian life of its nightclubs, cabarets and circuses.
When World War I broke out, Kirchner enlisted, but had a mental and physical breakdown in 1915 and was discharged. He then lived in Switzerland until his death by suicide in1938 Here we can see the Swiss mountains out the window, and the weary face showing his struggle with depression.
Erich Heckel did this painting as an almost direct illustration from Dostoyevsky’s novel Brothers Karamazov…the tortured Christ, the distress on the face of one man and the menace of the other man all refer to the story of Christ and the Grand Inquisitor.
Otto M üller used the most soft colors of any of the Expressionists. He was impressed by Egyptian wall paintings and developed techniques to emulate their muted tonalities. The depiction of nudes was thought to be liberating from the 19 th century prudery, and a plunge into “primitiveness”.
Emil Nolde had said” primordial people live in their nature, are one with it and are a part of the entire universe”.
Max Pechstein became successful earlier that other members of Die Br ücke. In this painting, Indian and Woman, we can see his choice of an exotic subject, modeling of the figure and Fauve inspired color. His painting style was also free from the anxiety that informed so much of Kirchner’s work.
One of the most bold colorists in Die Br ücke, Karl Schmidt-Rottloff portrayed himself in this self-portrait as the very image of the arrogant young Expressionist. Although he was commissioned to redesign the German national eagle, his art was denounced by the Nazi government along with the other Expressionists.
Karl Schmidt-Rottloff, although never a fully abstract painter, he was probably the member of Die Brucke who moved furthest and most convincingly in the direction of abstract structure.
Expressionists revived print making as a major art form. K ä the Kollwitz devoted her life and her art (printmaking and sculpture) to a form of protest and social criticism. She was the first of the German Social Realists who developed out of the Expressionist movement.
When she married a doctor, his patients, mostly the poor of Berlin, became her models
Prevented from studying at the Academy because she was a woman, she studied art at a Berlin school for women. K äthe Kollwitz chose print making as her medium because each print could be made multiple times to convey a message to a wide audience.
Kollwitz produced prints in a series, and this print, Death Seizing a Woman is part of her last great series. The theme of death had become a familiar one after the death of her own son during World War I.
Die Br ücke was the first manifestation of German Expressionism, but a more far reaching movement was forming in Munich around an artist named Vasily Kandinsky.
Born in Russia, educated in law and economics, he began to study art at the age of 30. He moved to Munich, Germany and began several organizations dedicated to advancing the most experimental painters. He began to experiment with nonrepresentational art.
Kandinsky believed that art should express the spiritual rather than the material….there was always a mystical core to his thinking . He was the first European artist to break through the representational barrier and carry painting into total abstraction.
Members of the Blaue Reiter were not held together by common stylistic principles, but were a loose association of young artists enthusiastic about new experiments and united in their oppositions.
Franz Mark was the Blue Rider closest to the traditions of German Romanticism and lyrical naturalism. From an early date he turned to animals as a source of spiritual harmony and purity in nature.
In The Large Blue Horses, the horizon line is high so that the shape of the hills repeat the lines of the curves of the horses
To Marc, color was full of meaning. Blue was masculine, robust and spiritual; yellow as a feminine principle, gentle, serine and sensual; red as matter, brutal and heavy….his use of colors formed abstract shapes and took on spiritual or material significance independent of the subject.
In Marc’s later work, he had begun to move toward more abstraction, but he was killed in action in World War I at the age of 36.
Paul Klee, born in Switzerland, developed a visual language seemingly endless in its invention and variety of forms. His complex language of signs and symbols evolved through private fantasy and his varied interests including plant and animal life, astronomy and typography. Also interested in music, he said that color should be “played like a chromatic keyboard”.
Klee brought tremendous verbal skills, and wit to his work using letters and words literally and as formal devices in his compositions. He often use poetic and humorous titles for his work.
Although he was not a Cubist, he often used some cubist techniques as a framework for his compositions .
The Expressionists in Austria were never organized into a group, as they were under Kandinsky in Germany Like Klee, the Austrians Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka each had his highly individualized interpretation of the sytle.
Egon Schile, only 28 when he died of the world wide influenza epidemic of 1918,was primarily encouraged by Gustav Klimpt. They met in 1907, and were good friends, although Schele’s style wasn’t as decorative as Klimpt’s style had been.
Schiele’s self portraits rank among his supreme achievements. They range from self revelation of personal insight to youthful bravado.
In comparing Schiele’s and Klimt’s portrayals of death with people, we can see some of the differences between the Symbolist movement and the Expressionist movement.
Schiele primarily used models, prostitutes and his sister as models. Once, when he innocently asked to use some children as models, he was jailed for 24 days for “offences against public morality”.
Throughout his life he remained faithful to the spirit of Expressionism-to the power of emotion and the deeply felt sensitivity to the inner qualities of nature and the human soul.
