EXPRESSIONISM
EXPRESSIONISM
• A term used to denote the use of distortion
and exaggeration for emotional effect,
which first surfaced in the art literature of the
early twentieth century. When applied in a
stylistic sense, with reference in particular to
the use of intense colour, agitated
brushstrokes, and disjointed space. Rather
than a single style, it was a climate that
affected not only the fine arts but also
dance, cinema, literature and the theatre.
EXPRESSIONISM
• Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist
attempts to depict not objective reality but rather
the subjective emotions and responses that objects
and events arouse in him. He accomplishes his aim
through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and
fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or
dynamic application of formal elements. In a
broader sense Expressionism is one of the main
currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th
centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective,
personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of
a wide range of modern artists and art movements.
• The paintings aim to reflect the artists's state of mind
rather than the reality of the external world.
EXPRESSIONISM
• Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to
reproduce the impression suggested by the
surrounding world, but to strongly impose
the artist's own sensibility to the world's
representation. The expressionist artist
substitutes to the visual object reality his own
image of this object, which he feels as an
accurate representation of its real meaning.
The search of harmony and forms is not as
important as trying to achieve the highest
expression intensity, both from the aesthetic
point of view and according to idea and
human critics.
EXPRESSIONISM
• Expressionism assessed itself mostly in Germany, in
1910. As an international movement, expressionism
has also been thought of as inheriting from certain
medieval art forms and, more directly, Cézanne,
Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism movement.
EXPRESSIONISM
The most well known German expressionists are Max
Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz,
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde,
Max Pechstein; the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the
Czech Alfred Kubin and the Norwegian Edvard
Munch are also related to this movement. During his
stay in Germany, the Russian Kandinsky was also an
expressionism addict.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• Die Brücke (The Bridge) was the first of two
Expressionist movements that emerged in Germany
in the early decades of the 20th century. In 1905 a
group of German Expressionist artists came together
in Dresden and took that name chosen by SchmidtRottluff to indicate their faith in the art of the future,
towards which their work would serve as a bridge.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• In practice they were not a cohesive group, and
their art became an angst-ridden type of
Expressionism. The achievement that had the most
lasting value was their revival of graphic arts, in
particular, the woodcut using bold and simplified
forms.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• The artists of Die Brücke drew inspiration from
Van Gogh, Gauguin and primitive art.
Munch was also a strong influence, having
exhibited his art in Berlin from 1892. Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), the leading
spirit of Die Brücke, wanted German art to
be a bridge to the future. He insisted that
the group, which included Erich Heckel
(1883-1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluf (18841976), ``express inner convictions... with
sincerity and spontaneity''.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• Even at their wildest, the Fauves had
retained a sense of harmony and design,
but Die Brücke abandoned such restraint.
They used images of the modern city to
convey a hostile, alienating world, with
distorted figures and colors. Kirchner does
just this in Berlin Street Scene (1913; 121 x 95
cm (47 1/2 x 37 1/2 in)), where the shrill
colors and jagged hysteria of his own vision
flash forth uneasily. There is a powerful sense
of violence, contained with difficulty, in
much of their art.
BERLIN STREET SCENE (1913-1914)
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• Emil Nolde (1867-1956), briefly associated
with Die Brücke, was a more profound
Expressionist who worked in isolation for
much of his career. His interest in primitive art
and sensual color led him to paint some
remarkable pictures with dynamic energy,
simple rhythms, and visual tension. He could
even illuminate the marshes of his native
Germany with dramatic clashes of stunning
color. Yet Early Evening (1916; 74 x 101 cm
(29 x 39 1/2 in)) is not mere drama: light
glimmers over the distance with an
exhilarating sense of space.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• Die Brücke collapsed as the inner
convictions of each artist began to differ,
but arguably the greatest German artist of
the time was Max Beckmann (1884-1950).
Working independently, he constructed his
own bridge, to link the objective truthfulness
of great artists of the past with his own
subjective emotions. Like some other
Expressionists, he served in World War I and
suffered unbearable depression and
hallucinations as a result.
DIE BRÜCKE (THE BRIDGE)
• His work reflects his stress
through its sheer intensity:
cruel, brutal images are held
still by solid colors and flat,
heavy shapes to give an
almost timeless quality.
MAX BECKMANN
1884-1950
MAX BECKMANN
1884-1950
. Max Beckmann began his artistic studies in 1900-03
at the Art Academy in Weimar. In 1904, he moved
to Berlin where he joined the Berlin Secession in
1907. In 1914, he helped found the Freie Sezession.
When WWI began, he volunteered as a medical
orderly in East Prussia. In 1915, he suffered a nervous
breakdown and moved to Frankfurt. In 1925, he was
included in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Sobriety)
exhibition at the Kunsthall Mannheim. In 1926, he
had his first exhibition in America. From 1929-32, he
spent his winters in Paris and a week each month in
Frankfurt. In 1931, he had his first exhibition in Paris.
MAX BECKMANN
1884-1950
• Within months of Hitler’s rise to power in
1933, Beckmann lost his teaching position at
the Stadelschule in Frankfurt. In 1937, 590
works were removed from German
museums and 9 works were included in the
Degenerate Art traveling exhibition. He
moved to Berlin in search of anonymity but
eventually emigrated to Holland. In 1940, he
was invited to teach a summer semester at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but
the American Consulate refused his visa so
he had to spend the War years in
Amsterdam.
MAX BECKMANN
1884-1950
• In 1947, he taught at George Washington
University in St. Louis. In 1949, he taught at
the Art School of the University of Colorado,
the School of the Brooklyn Museum and Mills
College in Oakland, California. In December
1950 while walking to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York to see the
American Painting Today exhibition, he died
of a heart attack. His last self portrait was
included in that show.
DIE BERGPREDIGT
LITHOGRAPH, 1911
LITHOGRAPHY
• In the graphic arts, a method of printing from a
prepared flat stone or metal or plastic plate,
invented in the late eighteenth century. A drawing
is made on the stone or plate with a greasy crayon
or tusche, and then washed with water. When ink is
applied it sticks to the greasy drawing but runs off
(or is resisted by) the wet surface allowing a print —
a lithograph — to be made of the drawing. The
artist, or other print maker under the artist's
supervision, then covers the plate with a sheet of
paper and runs both through a press under light
pressure. For color lithography separate drawings
are made for each color.
DIE GÄHNENDEN
DRYPOINT. 1918.
CAFÉMUSIK
DRYPOINT. 1918.
DRYPOINT
• An intaglio printing process in which burrs
are left on the plate by the pointed needle
(or "pencil") that directly inscribes lines. A
kind of engraving which has a soft, fuzzy line
because of the metal burrs.
INTAGLIO
• Intaglio - The collective term for several
graphic processes in which prints are made
from ink trapped in the grooves in an incised
metal plate. Etchings and engravings are
the most typical examples. It may also refer
to imagery incised on gems or hardstones,
seals, and dies for coins, or to an object
decorated in this way; which when pressed
or stamped into a soft substance, produces
a positive relief in that substance.
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH RED SCARF 1917
FALLING MAN 1950
DEPARTURES, TRIPTYCH
HELL OF THE BIRDS 1938
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner grew up in the working
class town of Chemnitz. He studied painting
in Munich and architecture at the Saxon
Technical School in Dresden. In 1905, he
formed Die Brücke group along with fellow
architecture students, Frity Bleyl, Erich Heckel
and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Kirchner was
considered the group's leader and he
recruited Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde to
join the movement in 1906. It was Kirchner
who introduced the group to Primitivism as
manifested in the art of the South Seas.
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
• During World War I, Kirchner struggled with
alcoholism and he was discharged from the
army in 1915 to enter the sanatorium at
Kreuzlingen. Over the next few years, he was
in and out of institutions both in Germany
and Switzerland. His chronic insomnia led to
dependence on drugs and alcohol which
intensified his severe emotional and
physiological problems.
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
• In 1921, he had an exhibtion of fifty works at the
Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin and in 1923 he had a
retrospective show at the Kunsthalle in Basel. In
1931, he was apointed a member of the Prussian
Academy of Fine Arts. In 1937, he was asked to
resign after the Nazis declared his art "degenerate"
and confiscated 639 works from museums in
Germany.
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
• Ironically, the same year, he had an exhibition at
the Detroit Institute of Art in the United States.
Kirchner had 32 works displayed in the infamous
Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. In 1938,
distraught over the Nazi denunciation of his work,
he committed suicide.
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1880-1938
• Kirchner produced more than 2,000 prints, making
him one of the most prolific printmakers of the
period. Half of these were woodcuts and most were
handprinted by Kirchner in editions of less than ten.
ELISABETH-UFER (BERLIN)
WOODCUT. 1912/13
FRIEDRICHSTRASSE, 1914
HOUSES IN DRESDEN, 1909/1910
THE VISIT - COUPLE AND NEWCOMER,
1922
AUGUST MACKE
1883-1914
• August Macke began his studies in Düsseldorf in
1904 at the Kunstakademie. However he was truly
inspired by his evening courses with printmaker Fritz
Helmuth Ehmcke at the Kunstgewerbeschule. In
1905, Macke traveled to Florence and in 1906 he
traveled to the Netherlands, Belgium and London.
Upon his return to Germany in 1906, he quit school.
Instead, he took a trip to Paris where he
encountered Impressionism. In the autumn of 1907,
he moved to Berlin to join the studio of Lovis Corinth.
Corinth's constructive criticism did not suit Macke's
temperament nor did the city's oppressive
atmosphere. Therefore, he returned to Bonn in 1908.
AUGUST MACKE
1883-1914
• His future wife's family supported his artistic
endeavors which included another trip to Italy and
Paris where he first came into contact with the
paintings of Cézanne at Ambroise Vollard's gallery.
Her uncle, Bernhard Koehler, became an important
patron for all Der Blaue Reiter artists.
AUGUST MACKE
1883-1914
• In 1910, Macke moved to Tegernsee near
Munich where he met Franz Marc with
whom he joined the Neue
Künstlervereinigung and then Der Blaue
Reiter. From 1911-14, he exhibited regularly
in Munich, Cologne, Dresden, at the Sturm
Gallery in Berlin and Moscow. His bold use of
color came from his contact with the School
of Paris. In 1912, Macke, Marc and Klee
made a pilgrimage to visit Robert Delaunay
in Paris. In 1914, he traveled to Tunis with
Paul Klee producing a series of vivid
watercolors.
AUGUST MACKE
1883-1914
• Tragically, he was killed in action on
September 26, 1914.
Macke's most distinguished works date from
1912-14 when he most perfectly combined
his French influences with Der Blaue Reiter's
Expressionist style. He was equally active in
the decorative arts and printmaking
occupied a very minor position among all of
his artistic endeavors. He produced only one
woodcut in 1907 and two linocuts in 1913,
therefore prints by Macke are extremely
rare.
A WOMAN IN GREEN JACKET
ST. GERMAIN NEAR TUNIS 1914
PATIO OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE IN ST
GERMAIN
EMIL NOLDE
1867-1956
EMIL NOLDE
1867-1956
• Emil Nolde was actually born Emil Hansen,
the son of a farmer from the North of
Germany near the Danish border. He had a
solitary and brooding nature not unlike
others from the North. He was often
considered an outsider but admired for his
inner conviction and ability to create art
with intense psychological power. In 1902,
he changed his last name to Nolde when he
married Ada Vilstrup and began his artistic
career began at the age of 35.
EMIL NOLDE
1867-1956
• At the Berlin Secession exhibition in 1906, his
controversial painting Erntetag caught the attention
of prominent collectors including Gustav Schiefler
who would later publish the catalog raisonne for his
prints. Later that year he was invited to join Die
Brucke. Nolde left the Berlin Secession in 1910 after
an argument with its President, Max Liebermann. In
1913-14, he and Ada traveled to the South Seas.
EMIL NOLDE
1867-1956
• He is considered by many to be the finest
intaglio printmaker of Die Brucke. He
employed a unique brush technique of
treating the copper plate to produce rich
tonal effects with textural results. Nolde
created almost 200 etchings between 190411 followed by bursts in 1918 and 1922. His
woodcuts were made in 1906, 1912 and
1917. His lithographs were made in 1907,
1911 and 1913. Nolde virtually created
creating prints after 1926.
EMIL NOLDE
1867-1956
• In 1934, Nolde was expelled from the
Akademie der Kunste. In 1941, the Nazis
forbid him to paint. 1,052 of his works were
removed from museums and 26 of his works
were included in the Degenerate Art
traveling exhibition in 1937. After 1941, Nolde
left Berlin and never returned. Instead, he
and his wife retreated to Seebull House near
the Danish border. In 1944, an Allied air raid
destroyed his Berlin studio filled with many
valuable works of art and his meticulously
kept archive documenting his graphic work.
'THE PROPHET', WOODCUT 1912
MASKS 1911
WHITE TREE TRUNKS 1908
THE LAST SUPPER 1909
THE SICK CHILD, 1896
MUNCH PAINTS HIS SICK SISTER WITH A FATAL DISEASE
(TUBERCULOSIS)
ASHES 1894
DEATH IN THE SICKROOM 1895
THE SCREAM 1893
DEGENERATE ART
• From the moment they came to power, the Nazis
launched a vicious campaign against art they
designated "degenerate," a category that included
all modernist art, especially abstract, Cubist,
Expressionist, and Surrealist art. Thus Picasso, Matisse,
Klee, Kandinsky, Kirchner, and even nineteenthcentury Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists
including Renoir, Degas, Cézanne and Van Gogh,
were reviled as exponents of avant-garde art
movements that were considered intellectual, elitist,
foreign, and socialist-influenced. Jewish artists such
as Marc Chagall were, of course, singled out for
special condemnation.
DEGENERATE ART
• The Nazi government promoted a "true"
German art, continuing in the tradition of
German nineteenth-century realistic genre
painting, that upheld "respectable" moral
values and was easy to understand. Hitler's
inner circle also treasured certain Old
Masters whom they regarded as expressing
the true Aryan spirit, in particular Rembrandt,
Cranach, and Vermeer. Museum directors
and curators who refused to cooperate with
the new anti-modernist collecting policies
were dismissed.
DEGENERATE ART
• In 1937, in order to purge German museums of their
holdings of "degenerate" art, Joseph Goebbels,
Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment,
charged a commission headed by Adolf Ziegler,
one of Hitler's favorite artists, with the seizure of
works of German "degenerate" art created since
1910 owned by German state, provincial and
municipal museums. Although the primary focus
was on German art, the Ziegler commission's reach
soon expanded to encompass non-German artists
such as the Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian.
DEGENERATE ART
• The confiscated art was gathered in a huge
exhibition in Munich to educate the German
people about the "evils" of modern art, and
especially its alleged Jewish/Bolshevist
influences. Marc Chagall's Purim,
confiscated from the Museum Folkwang in
Essen, was one of the paintings selected for
this infamous exhibition, entitled
"Degenerate Art" (Entartete Kunst), which
opened in Munich on July 19, 1937.
MARC CHAGALL PURIM
EXAMPLE OF WORK CONSIDERED
DEGENERATE…
• The painting—the Folkwang's only Chagall—
had been acquired in the 1920's by the
previous director, Ernst Gosebruch. Set in a
Russian town, its theme is the celebration of
Jewish festival of Purim, which
commemorates the deliverance of the
Persian Jews. In the center a boy carries
Purim sweets from the market stall-keeper on
the right. Nazi officials chose Purim, along
with three other works by Chagall, for
display in the notorious exibition.
• Although the propaganda surrounding the
Degenerate Art exhibition emphasized its
"Jewishness," of the 112 artists represented in the
exhibition, only 6 were Jews, including Chagall.
Chagall was a Russian-born artist who spent most of
his career in France. Most likely he was included in
the Degenerate Art exhibition because his early
work had become famous in Germany. Purim was
displayed in Room 2 of the exhibition, which
contained only works by Jewish artists. On the walls
quotations from Hitler and the Nazi art theorist Alfred
Rosenberg condemned the "incompetents and
charlatans," the "Jews and Marxists," whose works
appeared there.
DEGENERATE ART
• Exhibition organizers surrounded the
paintings and sculpture with mocking graffiti
and quotations from Hitler's speeches,
designed to inflame public opinion against
this "decadent" avant-garde art. Ironically,
the exhibition attracted five times as many
visitors (36,000 on one Sunday alone) as the
equally large "Great German Art Exhibition"
of Nazi-approved art that opened in Munich
at the same time.
DEGENERATE ART
• Eventually the Nazi authorities confiscated more
than 17,000 works of art from German museums, all
of which were meticulously inventoried and
assigned a registry number. Although "degenerate"
works such as Chagall's were to be banished from
Germany, the Nazi government realized their
usefulness as a convenient means of raising muchneeded foreign cash to finance the war machine,
or simply to acquire the type of art desired by Hitler.
Some of the most valuable confiscated art, such as
Van Gogh's Self-Portrait from Munich, was
auctioned at the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne,
Switzerland, in June, 1939.
DEGENERATE ART
• Many of the rest of the museum-confiscated works
were distributed to four German dealers, who
arranged for their sale on the international art
market, often for absurdly low prices. In this way,
many important works of art removed from German
museum collections found their way to American
museums. Tragically, those artworks deemed
unsaleable (the "dregs," as Goebbels called them),
almost five thousand paintings and works of art on
paper, were probably destroyed in a bonfire in the
courtyard of the Berlin central fire station in 1939 as
a fire department training exercise.
DEGENERATE ART
• German public museums have not requested the
return of artworks that were confiscated and sold
off under the Nazi regime, because such seizures of
art from state-owned museums by an elected
government were legal. In effect, the German
government was free to dispose of its own property.
A law enacted (after the fact) on May 31, 1938
decreed that the Reich could appropriate artworks
from public museums in Germany without
compensation. Further, in September 1948,
museums in West Germany issued a decision to
relinquish all claims to art that had been
confiscated by the Nazi government.