Art Movement: Expressionism

– Expressionist Artists, Art & Overview

Wassily Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter, 1910

By Shira Wolfe

At the start of the twentieth century, an artistic tendency swept through

Europe, spurred on by resistance to bourgeois culture and a fervent search
for rejuvenated creativity. It came to be known as Expressionism. Words
that characterize Expressionist artists and Expressionist art are ‘self’,
‘psyche’, ‘body’, ‘sexuality’, ‘nature’, and ‘spirit’. The term is so elastic
that it can accommodate artists ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Egon
Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky. Together, these artists tapped into very
raw, true, and eternal questions, topics, and struggles that had been stirring
beneath the surface and which remain familiar to us even today.

Watch the video below to learn more about the key ideas behind
Expressionism, the movement’s significant artists, and the most famous
expressionist works.
What is Expressionism? The Art Movement Explained

Key dates: 1905-1920

Key regions: Germany, Austria, France
Key words: self, psyche, body, sexuality, nature, spirit, emotions, mysticism,
distortion of reality, exaggeration, heightened use of colour
Key artists: Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Oskar
Kokoschka, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

What is Expressionism?
Expressionism is considered more as an international tendency than a
coherent art movement, which was particularly influential at the beginning
of the twentieth century. It spanned various fields: art, literature, music,
theatre, and architecture. Expressionist artists sought to express emotional
experience, rather than physical reality. Famous Expressionist paintings
are Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Wassily Kandinsky’s Der Blaue Reiter,
and Egon Schiele’s Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up.

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. In France, the Dutch
artist Van Gogh was digging deep and revealing his unusual, troubled, and
colorful psyche; in Germany, the Russian Wassily Kandinsky was
exploring spirituality in art as an antidote to alienation in the modern
world; in Austria, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka were fighting
society’s moral hypocrisy by tackling topics such as sexuality, death, and
violence; finally, Edvard Munch was making waves in Norway and all
over Europe with his wild, intense expressions of the environment and his
self and psyche.
French Expressionism
In France, the main artists often associated with Expressionism were
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. Though Van Gogh
and Gauguin were active in the years slightly before what is regarded as
the main period of Expressionism (1905-1920), 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
colors and styles of brushwork to depict emotions and experiences,
moving away from realistic depictions of their subjects to how they felt
and perceived them.
 Edvard
Munch, The Scream. Painting reproduced in “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie
 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marcella.
Painting reproduced in “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie
 Egon Schiele, Seated Woman with Bent
Knee. In “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie

German Expressionism
In Germany, Expressionism is particularly associated with
the Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter groups. 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.

Brücke was formed in Dresden in 1905 as a bohemian collective of

expressionist artists opposing the bourgeois social order of Germany. They
chose their name, Brücke, to describe their desire to bridge the past and the
present. The artists attempted to escape the confines of modern middle-
class life by exploring a heightened use of color, a direct, simplified
approach to form, and free sexuality in their work.
Der Blaue Reiter was founded in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz
Marc. 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.

Read more about German Expressionism.

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation VII. Painting reproduced in “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie

Austrian Expressionism
Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka are the two main figures of Austrian
Expressionism. 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
19th and early 20th centuries, 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.
 Egon Schiele, Two
Girls (lovers). Painting reproduced in “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie

Norwegian Expressionism
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 1909 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.
 Edvard
Munch, The Kiss. Painting reproduced in “Expressionism” by Ashley Bassie

Iconic Expressionist Artworks & Artists

Read about the most iconic works of Expressionism.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893)

This painting was inspired by a single momentary experience that Munch
had while in France: “I was walking along the road with two friends. 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.”
(“Expressionism”, Ashley Bassie, p.69) The scream is felt by the figure, it
engulfs him completely, and pierces both the environment and his psyche.
Wassily Kandinsky’s Der Blaue Reiter (1903)
Der Blaue Reiter is one of Kandinsky’s first Expressionist works. It
depicts a horseback rider in blue galloping through the fields. Der Blaue
Reiter (The Blue Rider) was also used as the name for the Expressionist
artist group founded in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc.

Egon Schiele’s Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up (1917)

Egon Schiele painted his wife Edith Harms in 1917, 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. The portrait is bold and suggestive,
with definite erotic undertones – eroticism being one of the main themes in
Schiele’s work.

Franz Marc’s Blue Horses (1911)

Franz Marc was one of the founding members of Der Blaue Reiter. He
gave an emotional and psychological meaning to the colors he used in his
work, and blue was used to depict masculinity and spirituality. Marc was
fascinated by animals and their rich inner worlds, and he portrayed his
animal subjects in a deeply emotional way.

Franz Marc, Blue Horses, 1911

The end of Expressionism, and its continuation
Several expressionist artists lost their lives during World War I, or as a
result of the war due to traumas and illness. Franz Marc fell in 1916; Egon
Schiele died during the 1918 influenza epidemic, and many others took
their own lives after breaking down under the traumas of the war. Finally,
the era of German Expressionism was extinguished by the Nazi
dictatorship in 1933. Countless artists of the time, among whom were
Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard
Munch, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, were labeled
as “degenerate artists” by the Nazis and their Expressionist artworks were
removed from museums and confiscated.

Yet Expressionism continued to inspire and live on in later artists and art
movements. For example, Abstract Expressionism developed as an
important avant-garde movement in the post-war United States in the
1940s and 1950s. The Abstract Expressionists renounced figuration and
instead explored color fields, gestural brushstrokes, and spontaneity in
their art. Later, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Neo-Expressionism started
developing as a reaction against the Conceptual art and Minimalist art of
the time. Neo-Expressionist artists were greatly inspired by the German
Expressionists who came before them, often depicting their subjects in a
raw manner with expressive brushstrokes and intense colors. Famous Neo-
Expressionist artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Julian
Schnabel, Eric Fischl, and David Salle.
Anselm Kiefer, The Orders of the Night. Photo courtesy of Seattle Art Museum