German Expressionism

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German Expressionism

• Early 20th Century

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• German artists were aware of the developments
  taking place in France at the end of the 19th
  Century and the beginning of the 20th.
• They were influenced by the work of the Post
  Impressionists Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Matisse.
• There were two main groups or schools of German
  Expressionism Die Brucke, and Die Blaue Reiter.

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Die Brucke 1906 - 1912

• A group of young architects in Dresden, Germany,
  formed an alliance and began painting together.
• They called themselves Die Brucke, which means
  The Bridge, for they felt that their art would be
  a bridge to a brighter future, and a way to
  communicate their utopian ideals to society.

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• Some of the artists associated with Die Brucke
  were
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880 1938
• Edvard Munch 1863 1944
• Paula Modersohn Becker 1876 1906
• Kathe Kollwitz 1867 - 1945

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Die Brucke

• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Edvard Munch
• ( Norwegian)

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• Edvard
  Munch
• The
  Scream
• 1893

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Munch - The Scream

• Before the Expressionist period artists showed
  people in anguish, just as they would appear to a
  rational, objective viewer. With Munch and the
  other Expressionists, this changed. They showed
  the world as viewed through the eyes of people in
  anguish. When seen that way, the colors and
  shapes of familiar objects change. Trees, hills,
  houses, and people are pulled out of shape and
  take on new, unexpected colors.

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Munch -The Scream

• Munch used curved shapes and colors that are
  expressive rather than realistic. Everything is
  distorted to make you feel a certain waythere is
  no mistaking the fact that the person in this
  painting is terrified. The body bends and twists
  as a scream builds and erupts from deep within.
  It is a scream so piercing that the figure clasps
  its hands tightly over its ears. The entire
  scene vibrates with the intensity of this scream
  it echoes across the landscape like ripples
  across still water (Mittler. Art in Focus. 538).

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Edvard Munch Vampire -1893
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Edvard Munch Sick Child - 1886
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• The childhood of Edvard Munch was marked by
  tragedy. His mother died when he was five, and
  one of his sisters died when he was fourteen
  The fear, suffering and death of loved ones that
  he experienced in his own life became the subject
  matter for his art (Mittler. Art in Focus. 537).

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• How much his own suffering contributed to his
  work can be seen in a picture entitled The Sick
  Child. He returned to this subject several times
  in paintings and prints and was no doubt inspired
  by the death of his older sister. In the
  painting, Munch captures the pale complexion,
  colorless lips, and hopeless stare of a child
  weakened and finally conquered by illness. Beyond
  caring, she looks past her grieving mother to a
  certain, tragic future. (Mittler. Art in Focus.
  537)

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• Pictures like this shocked viewers when the
  paintings were first seen. Munchs figures
  seemed crude and grotesque when compared to the
  colorful and light hearted visions of the
  Impressionists, who were enjoying great
  popularity at the time. Munchs works, however,
  were in keeping with the period in which he
  lived, a period when writers and artists were
  turning their attention inward. Like Munch, they
  were interested in exploring feelings and
  emotions rather than describing outward
  appearances. (Mittler. Art in Focus. 537)

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

• Kirchner painted a series of street scenes in
  Berlin, the capital of Germany, and the most
  populous city in Europe before the First World
  War.
• It was a city brimming with culture there were 6
  opera companies in the city and over 30 theatres.
  Dance halls and eating establishments offered
  non stop entertainment for the bourgeoisie, who
  loved to dress up and join the parades of
  fashionable people on the streets.

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• There was a seedy down side to this cultural
  glitter, of course. Prostitution was rife, and
  traditional values and customs were being lost in
  the mad rush to acquire material goods and seek
  pleasure.
• The people in Kirchners street scenes look
  anonymous. They are all feathers and finery and
  have lost their individual humanity. They seem to
  wear haughty masks.

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• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Street Scene, Berlin
• 1913

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• Kirchner
• News
• 1914

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• Kirchner
• Women in Blue
• 1913

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• The slashing diagonals and angular, attenuated
  shapes of these figures are characteristic of
  Kirchners style.

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• Kirchner
• Potsdammer
  Platz
• 1914

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Kathe Kollwitz
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• One of the themes to which Kollwitz returned
  throughout her career was death. 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.
• Although Kollwitz hated war, one of her sons was
  drafted and killed during the first World War
• 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.

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• 
  Kathe
• 
  Kollwitz

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• 
  Kollwitz
• 
  Poverty
• 
  1893

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• 
  Kollwitz
• 
  Death

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• 
  Kollwitz
• 
  

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• 
  Kollwitz
• 
  
• 
  Woman
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  with her
• 
  dead child

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• 
  Kollwitz
• 
  Seed for the
• 
  planting
• 
  shall not
• 
  be ground
• up

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• Kollwitz
• Woman Greeting Death
• 1934

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• This work shows a woman frail, weak, and
  defeated extending her hand to Death. Having
  exhausted her determination and her strength in a
  desperate struggle for survival, she now
  acknowledges defeat and quietly surrenders
  herself and her children to the inevitable. Too
  weak even to show fear, she reaches out with one
  hand while gently pushing her children forward
  with the other. One child, terrified, turns
  away, but the other stares directly at Death.
  Perhaps he is too young to recognize the stranger
  who takes his mothers hand and will soon reach
  out for his. (Mittler. Art in Focus. 537)

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• Paula Modersohn Becker

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• Paula
  Modersohn
• Becker

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• 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.
• (Wikipedia)

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• 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. Other post
  impressionists were especially influential,
  including Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
  (Wikipedia

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• 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. Some critics consider this period of
  her art production to be the strongest and most
  compelling.

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• In 1907, Modersohn-Becker returned to her husband
  in Worpswede. Their relationship, which had been
  particularly strained in 1906, had taken a turn
  towards improvement.
• Paula's long-lived wish to conceive and bear a
  child was fulfilled. Her daughter Mathilde
  (Tillie) was born on November 2, 1907. Paula and
  Otto were joyous.

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• Modersohn Becker was a highly expressive painter,
  whose work is characterized by rounded forms and
  decorative nature motifs.

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Paula Modersohn BeckerMother and Child
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• 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.

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Paula Modersohn Becker Self Portrait
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• Paula
  Modersohn
• 
  Becker
• The
  Old Peasant
• 
  Woman
• 
  1905

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Die Blaue Reiter

• A second group of German artists formed a group
  known as Die Blaue Reiter, or The Blue Rider.
  The name came from a painting by one of the
  artists in the group Wassily Kandinsky.
• These artists were centered in the southern
  German city of Munich.

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The Blue Rider School

• Some of the Artists associated with the Blue
  Rider School were
• Wassily Kandinsky 1866 1944
• Paul Klee 1879 1940
• Franz Marc1880 1916

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• Wassily Kandinsky
• Abstract Expressionism

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• Kandinsky is thought to be the first artist to
  cross the line into pure abstraction.
• The Post Impressionists had begun the movement
  away from realism. The Fauves took liberties
  with colour and abandoned the effort to portray
  space in three dimensions.
• The German Expressionists were more interested in
  exploring psychological inner worlds than in
  faithfully depicting the natural world.
• Now Kandinsky completely abandoned the necessity
  of using subject matter that referenced the
  natural world.

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Kandinsky Transverse Line
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Kandinsky Composition VI
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• 
  Kandinsky
• 
  Booom

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• Franz Marc

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Franz Marc - Horses
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• Franz Marc painted animals to express his
  spiritual longing for a return to a more
  primitive, instinctive, natural mode of living.
• The science of psychology was new at the time and
  the work of Freud and Jung (Germans) had led to a
  new awareness of man as an animal. Marc believed
  that human consciousness alienated mankind from
  the rest of the animal world, leaving humans
  strangers in the universe.

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• Franz Marc used colour in a symbolic way.
• He developed his own colour theory and symbolism,
  which equated the three primary colours with
  qualities and emotions. In its simplest terms,
  Marc associated blue with masculinity, and red
  and yellow with femininity since they are more
  earthy colours, but he also associated yellow
  with joy and happiness. Blue was viewed by Marc
  throughout his career to be the most deeply
  spiritual of the three colours.

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Franz Marc The Wolves. 1913
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Wolves . 1913

• Marcs Wolves expresses his dismay about the
  horrors of the Balkan War which would shortly
  lead to the outbreak of World War I.
• The wolves are symbolic of the human violence
  that was unfolding.
• The purple clouds look like explosions.

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• Franz Marc
• Tiger
• Note the medieval influence in this
• painting. The jewel tones are broken up with
  heavy black outlines, as in the stained glass
  windows of gothic cathedrals.

• 
  Franz Marc
• 
  Tiger

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• 
  Franz Marc
• 
  Blue Horses
• 
  Horses were
• 
  always
• 
  considered by Marc
• to
  be that was most
• 
  beautiful in the
• 
  natural world.

• Franz Marc Blue Horses
• Horses were always considered, by Marc, to be
  representative of all that was most beautiful in
  the
  natural world.

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• In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War
  (1914-18) Marc volunteered for military service,
  and in 1916 was killed in action, at the age of
  36.

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Franz Marc The Fate of the Animals
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• Max Beckmann
• Self Portrait

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Max Beckmann Family Picture
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Max Beckmann - Departure
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• Max Pechstein
• (wood cut) Self Portrait

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Pechstein - Head
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Pechstein Ballet Dancers
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• Egon Schiele

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• Egon Schiele
• The Artists Wife

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Egon Schiele The Family
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• This painting is unfinished. Schiele's wife died
  in the world-wide Spanish flu epidemic in 1918
  she was six months pregnant with their first
  child. Schiele died three days later of the same
  cause. He was twenty-eight. 

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• Egon Schiele
• Girls

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