Die brucke

The Bridge – German Expressionism

 GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

German Expressionism refers to a

number of related creative movements
beginning in Germany before the First
world war that reached a peak in Berlin
during the 1920s.
 What is Expressionism?

Expressionism” was a modernist

movement initially in poetry and
painting, originated in Germany at the
beginning of 20th century. Its typical
trait is to present the world solely from
a subjective perspective, distorting it
radically for emotional effect in order to
evoke moods and ideas.
Die Brucke (The Bridge) (1905-13)
Expressionist Art Group in Dresden)
• Die Brücke was founded on 7th June 1905 by four
architecture students.
• Die Brucke (The Bridge) consisted of a group
of Expressionist painters, who came together in
Dresden in 1905. Its founders, all architecture
students at the Dresden Technical School who
shared a studio in the city, included Fritz Bleyl
(1880-1966), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-
1976), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) and Erich
Heckel (1883-1970).
• Die Brucke artists were inspired mainly by Fauvism,
as well as the traditional social concern and angst,
characteristic of Nordic culture. Other influences
included Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), African and
Oceanic art, tribal motifs - all of which were
combined with Fauvist colourism, to create an
ultimately modern style of expressionism
 Die Brucke (The bridge)
• The artists of Die Brucke were critical of the intensely materialistic nature of
German bourgeois society. Much like the idealistic youth of the 1960s, they felt
a “return to nature” would benefit society and uplift human beings.
• They frequently painted nudes in landscapes, to express their rejection of
bourgeois rigidity (the influence of Gauguin is evident here).
• While the Impressionists had worked hard to record exactly what they saw as
natural light hit objects in a landscape, the German Expressionists allowed their
own personalities to shape their work; to see “the hand of the artist” in a work
was something to be encouraged, rather than avoided, they believed.
• Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves. Both movements shared
interests in primitivist art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme
emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic.
• Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both
groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction.
• The Die Brücke artists' emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and
sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their French
counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.
 Die Brucke (The bridge)
• The artists of Die Brucke were interested in extreme
psychological states. Munch is perhaps the most
obvious example of this (“The Scream”)
• They were also interested in traditional German
folklore and in the tradition of wood block
printmaking, which was developed centuries earlier
by the German artist Durer.
• The influence of medieval art is seen in the anti
illusionism and heavy use of outlines in
Expressionist art.
• The influence of Oceanic and African masks and
totems is also seen in the work of the German
Expressionists
 Die Brucke (The bridge)
Style of Expressionism
• Initially influenced by the Parisian style of Fauvism, which was
founded in the same year
• Die Brucke soon established its own Germanic identity based
on radical social views and an untrained but direct approach to
painting technique, with its garish colour-schemes and bold
outlines.
• Die Brucke was a cruder and more strident idiom, yet it
produced some of the most striking paintings of the 20th
century. Exemplified by garish urban scenes, female nudes,
mystical and visionary compositions, and rough figure painting,
noted works include: Nude on a Sofa(1909) by Erich
Heckel; Gap in the Dyke (1910), and Two Women (1912) by
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff; The Prophet (1912, woodcut) by Emil
Nolde; Semi-Nude Woman with Hat (1911), and Berlin Street
Scene (1913) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
1) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a
German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the
founders of the group Die Brücke
2) He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but
soon suffered a breakdown and was discharged.
3) In 1933, his work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis
and in 1937, over 600 of his works were sold or destroyed. In
1938, he committed suicide by gunshot.
4) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria
5) The group met initially in Kirchner's first studio, which had
previously been a butcher's shop. Kirchner's studio became a
venue to allow casual love-making and frequent nudity, and
hence the first group exhibition was held, focused on the
female nude
 An admirer of Albrecht Dürer, he revived the old art of woodblock printing, and
saw himself in the German tradition, yet he rejected academic styles and was
inspired by the modern city.
 The human figure was central to Kirchner's art. But the figure also informed his
images of Berlin, in which the demeanor of figures in the street often seemed more
important than the surrounding cityscape. And, most commonly, he depicted the
figure in movement, since he believed that this better expressed the fullness and
vitality of the human body.
 For him, it marked a reaction against the staid civility of bourgeois life. He would
always deny that he was influenced by other artists, yet Henri Matisse and Edvard
Munch were clearly important in shaping his style. Fauvism was particularly
significant in directing his palette, encouraging him to use flat areas of unbroken,
often unmixed color and simplified forms.
 he depicted men and women in his pictures, as people who often seem at war
with themselves or their environment. It also encouraged his interest in Primitive art ,
Primitive sculpture undoubtedly inspired his own approach to the medium and his
love of rough-hewn, partially painted surfaces.
 Important Art by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are Nude Dancers (Nackte Tanzerinnen)
(1909), Marzella (1909-1910), Street Scene, Berlin 1913, Kirchner News 1914 , Women
in Blue 1913 Potsdammer Platz 1914
 Edvard Munch
 Edvard Munch is best known as being a Norwegian born, expressionist painter, and printer
 Edvard Munch was born in Norway in 1863, and was raised in Christiania (known as Oslo
today). Edvard Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, and he was raised by his
father. Edvard's father suffered of mental illness .Their father raised them with the fears of
deep seated issues, which is part of the reason why the work of Edvard Munch took a
deeper tone, and why the artist was known to have so many repressed emotions as he
grew up.
 In 1885, Edvard Munch traveled to Paris, and was extremely influenced by impressionism
artists Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and followed by the post-impressionism artists
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin. In fact, the main style of Munch's
work is post-impressionism, and focused on this style
 much of the work that was created by Edvard Munch depicted his interest in nature, and
it was also noted that the tones and colors that he used in these pieces, did add more
color, and seemed a bit more cheerful, than most of the previous works he had created in
years past
 The pessimistic under toning which was quite prominent in much of his earlier works, had
faded quite a bit, and it seems he took more of a colorful, playful, and fun tone with the
pieces that he was creating, as opposed to the dark and somber style which he tended to
work with earlier on during the course of his career.
 A majority of the works which Edvard Munch created, were referred to as
the style known as symbolism. This is mainly because of the fact that the the
paintings he made focused on the internal view of the objects, as opposed
to the exterior, and what the eye could see.
 Many of Munch's works depict life and death scenes, love and terror, and
the feeling of loneliness was often a feeling which viewers would note that
his work patterns focused on. These emotions were depicted by the
contrasting lines, the darker colors, blocks of color, somber tones, and a
concise and exaggerated form, which depicted the darker side of the art
which he was designing.
 Upon his death, the works which he had created, were not given to family,
but they were instead donated to the Norwegian government, and were
placed in museums, in shows, and in various local public buildings in
Norway
 Munch is often and rightly compared with Van Gogh, who was one of the
first artists to paint what the French artist called "the mysterious centers of
the mind.“
 Edvard Munch's Masterpieces includes The Scream 1893, Vampire -1893,
Sick Child - 1886
 Paula Modersohn Becker
 Paula Modersohn-Becker (February 8, 1876 – November 21, 1907) was a
German painter and one of the most important representatives of early
expressionism.
 In a brief career, cut short by postpartum embolism at the age of 31, she
created a number of groundbreaking images of great intensity.
 She is becoming recognized as the first female painter to paint nude self-
portraits.[1] Using bold forays into subject matter and chromatic color
choices, she and fellow-artists Picasso and Matisse introduced the world
to modernism at the start of the twentieth century.
 At the age of 22, Modersohn Becker encountered the artistic community
of Worpswede. In this "village", artists had retreated to protest against the
domination of the art academy and life in the big city.
 At Worpswede, Paula took painting lessons from the asrtist Mackensen.
The main subjects were the life of the farmers and the northern German
landscape
 She also fell in love during this period, and in 1901 she married a fellow
Worpswede painter, Otto Modersohn.
 Between 1900 and 1907, Paula made several extended trips to Paris.
During one of her residencies in Paris, she took courses at theEcole des
Beaux Arts. She visited contemporary exhibitions often, and was
particularly intrigued with the work of Paul Cezanne
 On her last trip to Paris in 1906, she produced a body of paintings from that
gave her considerable satisfaction. During this period of painting, she
produced her initial nude self portraits (something no woman artist had
done before) and portraits of friends such as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke
 Modersohn Becker was a highly expressive painter, whose work is
characterized by rounded forms and decorative nature motifs. Tempera
was her medium of choice and she painted with a limited choice of
pigments such as zinc white, cadmium yellow, viridian and artificial
ultramarine
 Paula Modersohn Becker Mother and Child , Self Portrait , The Old Peasant
Woman 1905
 Kathe Kollwitz
 Käthe Kollwitz, née Schmidt (8 July 1867 – 22 April 1945) was a German
artist, who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching,
lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture.
 Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts.
 Her husband was a physician in one of the poorest sections of Berlin who
offered his services for any price his clientele could afford to pay in cash or
goods.
 After the First World War, she constructed a sculpture group showing a
number of mothers in a circle around their children with their arms linked to
enclose them and subsequently made a woodcut on the same theme,
"Seed corn must not be destroyed."
 Although in many of her prints her characters struggle mightily against
death, in her last series of prints, death comes almost as a long-awaited
friend, bringing relief from a life whose pain has grown unbearable.
 Kollwitz may have suffered from a childhood neurological disorder
called Alice in Wonderland syndrome, commonly associated with
migraines and sensory hallucinations.
 Kollwitz made a total of 275 prints, in etching, woodcut and
lithography. Virtually the only portraits she made during her life were
images of herself, of which there are at least fifty.
 40 German schools are named after Kollwitz
 rom 1928 to 1933 she was head of the Master Studio for Graphic Arts.
Kollwitz continued to devote herself to socially effective, easily
understood art.
 Kollwitz Poverty 1893 , Death , Woman with her dead child Seed for
the plant shall not be ground up, Woman Greeting Death1934
The below artworks are the most important in Die Brücke
- that both overview the major ideas of the movement,
and highlight the greatest achievements by each artist in
Die Brücke.
Programme (1906)
Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Artwork description & Analysis: The charismatic center
of Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner composed and
printed their original group statement a year after their
formation, championing in it their youth and claims of
authenticity. The statement, seen here, was turned into
a leaflet and distributed at the group's first exhibition.
Kirchner's choice of the woodcut medium indicates Die
Brücke's reverence for German precedents and direct
representation. Moreover, his formal style suggests
Johannes Gutenberg's innovations in moveable type,
with a large capital "M" serving as the first letter, leading
compact lines of printed script. However, a closer look
reveals the artistic, handmade nature of Programme,
which is evident in Kirchner's irregular lettering. That
natural, artisanal approach to art and design was a
remnant of his education in the Jugendstil mode of
architecture and the applied arts, which would greatly
influence early Die Brücke art and philosophy.
Woodcut on paper - Museum of Modern Art, New York
Poster for the first Die Brücke Exhibition (1906)
Artist: Fritz Bleyl
Artwork description & Analysis: In September and October of 1906, Die Brücke
mounted its first exhibition, focused on the theme of the female nude. The
group held the event in the showroom of the Karl-Max Seifert lamp factory, a
venue procured through one of Erich Heckel's connections from design
school. In contrast to the factory polish of the chandeliers and candelabras
on display, Fritz Bleyl designed an expressionistic poster for the event featuring
a partially abstracted nude woman. For Die Brücke and its proponents, the
figure was striking and direct, reflecting the group's attitude toward open
sexuality and the natural state of nudity. Reduced formally by Bleyl's style and
the printed medium to a series of curves and contours, the poster was
nonetheless deemed too sexually suggestive for public view and banned
under the pornography clause in Germany's national penal code.
Color lithograph - Die Brücke Museum, Berlin
Self-Portrait with Monocle (1910)
Artist: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Artwork description & Analysis: Karl Schmidt-
Rottluff's Self-Portrait with Monocle exemplifies
the lively, enervating brushstroke common
among many Die Brücke painters. Rather than
representing himself in a recognizable domestic
interior, Schmidt-Rottluff simplified the
background in an angular composition of flat
panes of vibrant color. He depicted himself in
the pose and garb of a bohemian intellectual,
complete with brooding visage, green
turtleneck, and thoughtful gesture. With the
focus placed on his eye and his painting hand,
he modernized the pose of Albrecht Dürer, one
of the few masters Die Brücke acknowledged,
in his well-loved Self-Portrait Wearing a Coat
with Fur Collar (1500).
Oil on canvas - Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Standing Child (1910)
Artist: Erich Heckel
Artwork description & Analysis: In their studies toward a
modern, expressionistic art, the Die Brücke group
regularly sketched, painted, and printed images of two
young neighborhood girls they used as models, one of
whom, "Franzi," (Lina Franziska Fehrmann) Erich Heckel
depicts here. The artists' desire for freedom of expression
was mirrored in the free movement and relative lack of
inhibition of their young muses. In Heckel's
woodcut Standing Child, Franzi's pose and slight grin
indicate a lack of shame about her nakedness, while her
skinny, immature body provides a visual analog for the
artist's angularity and simplification of form. Rendered in
stark, unmodulated white, her nudity contrasts with the
red and green background tones. Heckel also continued
the contour of her nose into the accentuated curves of
her eyebrows, a formal convention he culled from non-
Western masks he studied in Dresden's Ethnological
Museum.
Color woodcut - Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Masks (1911)
Artist: Emil Nolde
Artwork description & Analysis: The oldest member of Die
Brücke, Emil Nolde, already a seasoned painter, joined
the group in 1906. The jarring tonal combinations
in Masks show both his maturity as a colorist and his
respect for the northern Symbolist heritage of artists like
James Ensor and Edvard Munch. These artists often
incorporated the mask in their art as the visual language
of alienation and disconnect; in Nolde's Masks, the
masks melt into and rise from the canvas, creating a
grotesque, mocking chorus of faces. His inclusion of the
motif was also based on his intense study of African and
Pacific masks in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin,
where he lived intermittently throughout his adult life.
However, his representation of the masks is neither a
simple copy nor a transplantation of those forms onto
figures in his painting; rather, Nolde enhances the masks
with his figural distortions.
Oil on canvas - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, Missouri
Under the Trees (Nudes in the Open) (1911)
Artist: Max Pechstein
Artwork description & Analysis: The artists of Die Brücke were
often compared to the Fauve painters in Paris due to their
bright, vivid canvases and their semi-abstract handling of the
human form. And there is certainly common ground between
Max Pechstein's Under the Trees (Nudes in the Open) and Henri
Matisse's Joy of Life, both of which feature nude figures
rendered in vibrant colors in an idyllic landscape. However,
while Matisse and his cadre were still borrowing from the
Classical tradition, with muses playing flutes, dancing, and
making love, Pechstein depicted the landscape and events of
actual trips he and his bohemian artist's group took to the
country to escape from society and its strictures. Among the
radical philosophies Die Brücke espoused was naturism (nudism)
as a counterpoint to the industrialization of the modern city.
Painted in the year the Die Brücke group moved to the Berlin
metropolis, Under the Trees stands as an iconic example of that
anti-urban impulse.
Oil on canvas - Detroit Institute of Art
Street, Berlin (1913)
Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Artwork description & Analysis: Though Max Pechstein
moved first, the choice to move the Die Brücke group to
Berlin was made largely by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who saw
greater artistic opportunity in the more populous cultural
center. Painted shortly after the breakup of Die Brücke,
however, Street, Berlin exemplifies the destabilizing effect
the city had on Kirchner, who referred to the years 1911 to
1914 as "the loneliest times of my life." In the forefront are
two garishly painted prostitutes who stroll down a street so
drastically flattened that they appear to be sliding off the
canvas. They are as much on view, for sale, and separate
as the trinkets in the storefront window a man peruses on
the right. Kirchner would later write that as an artist he
identified with the prostitute, being constantly asked to sell
himself to survive. Thus, the work can be read as an iconic
self-portrait depicting both his formal innovations and the
psychological motivations that produced them.
Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Scream (1893)
Artist: Edward Munch
Artwork description & Analysis: The original German title
given by Munch to his work was Der Schrei der
Natur ("The Scream of Nature"). The Norwegian
word skrik usually is translated as "scream", but is
cognate with the English "shriek". Occasionally, the
painting also has been called The Cry. Among theories
advanced to account for the reddish sky in the
background is the artist's memory of the effects of the
powerful volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, which deeply
tinted sunset skies red in parts of the Western
hemisphere for months during 1883 and 1884, about a
decade before Munch painted The Scream. The scene
was identified as being the view from a road
overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedøya, from the
hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work,
Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was a
patient at the asylum at the foot of Ekeberg.
Vampire (1893)
Artist: Edward Munch
Artwork description & Analysis: The truth is, Munch
did not title this painting "Vampire." He called it
"Love and Pain" and it was only later that it picked
up the name and interpretation of a man locked in
a vampire's embrace. Munch maintained it was
nothing more than a woman kissing a man on the
neck. In the painting, we see a man in anguish,
arms around his love, while she tries to comfort him.
Perhaps she is laying her face on his shoulder even.
Some thought it was about his visits to prostitutes, yet
others saw it as some sort of macabre fantasy about
the death of his favorite sister. Evidently Munch
remained ambiguous about the deeper meaning
behind it. It was considered shocking when it was
unveiled, somehow people saw sado-masochism in
it.Maybe it's her loose red hair and red dress that
mark her as a siren. The darkness surrounding them,
and the man's own black clothing make her stand
out all the more.
Sick Child (1886)
Artist: Edward Munch
Artwork description & Analysis: records a moment before the
death of his older sister Johanne Sophie (1862 - 1877) from
tuberculosis at 15. Munch returned to this deeply traumatic
event again and again in his art, over six completed oil
paintings and many studies in various media, over a period
of more than 40 years. In the works, Sophie is typically shown
on her deathbed accompanied by a dark-haired, grieving
woman assumed to be her aunt Karen; the studies often
show her in a cropped head shot. In all the painted versions
Sophie is lying in a bed, obviously suffering from pain,
propped by a large white pillow, looking towards an ominous
curtain likely intended as a symbol of death. She is shown
with a haunted expression, clutching hands with a grief-
stricken older woman who seems to want to comfort her but
whose head is bowed as if she cannot bear to look the
younger girl in the eye. The Sick Child became for Munch -
who nearly died from tuberculosis himself as a child - a
means to record both his feelings of despair and g uilt that
he had been the one to survive and to confront his feelings
of loss for his late sister.
Mother and Child
Artist: Paula Modersohn Becker

Mother and Child was painted during her

pregnancy, when she anticipated motherhood
with excitement.
19 days after giving birth she died of an
embolism at age 31.