Expressionism

1
Expressionism
2
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.

3
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.

4
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.

5
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.

6
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.

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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
  Schmidt-Rottluff to indicate their faith in the
  art of the future, towards which their work would
  serve as a bridge.

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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.

9
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
  (1884-1976), express inner convictions... with
  sincerity and spontaneity''.

10
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.

11
Berlin Street Scene (1913-1914)
12
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.

13
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.

14
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.

15
Max Beckmann1884-1950
16
Max Beckmann1884-1950

• . 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.

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Max Beckmann1884-1950

• Within months of Hitlers 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.

18
Max Beckmann1884-1950

• 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.

19
DIE BERGPREDIGT Lithograph, 1911
20
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.

21
DIE GÄHNENDEN Drypoint. 1918.
22
CAFÉMUSIK Drypoint. 1918.
23
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.

24
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.

25
Self-Portrait with Red Scarf 1917
26
Falling Man 1950
27
Departures, Triptych
28
Hell of the Birds 1938
29
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938

• 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.

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938

• 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.

32
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938

• 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.

33
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938

• 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.

34
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner1880-1938

• 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.

35
ELISABETH-UFER (BERLIN) Woodcut. 1912/13
36
Friedrichstrasse, 1914
37
Houses in Dresden, 1909/1910
38
The Visit - Couple and Newcomer, 1922
39
August Macke1883-1914

• 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.

40
August Macke1883-1914

• 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.

41
August Macke1883-1914

• 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.

42
August Macke1883-1914

• 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.

43
A Woman In Green Jacket
44
St. Germain near Tunis 1914
45
Patio Of The Country House In St Germain
46
Emil Nolde1867-1956
47
Emil Nolde1867-1956

• 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.

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Emil Nolde1867-1956

• 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.

49
Emil Nolde1867-1956

• 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 1904-11 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.

50
Emil Nolde1867-1956

• 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.

51
'The Prophet', woodcut 1912
52
Masks 1911
53
White Tree Trunks 1908
54
The Last Supper 1909
55
The Sick Child, 1896Munch paints his sick sister
with a fatal disease (tuberculosis)
56
Ashes 1894
57
Death in the Sickroom 1895
58
The Scream 1893
59
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
  nineteenth-century 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.

60
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.

61
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.

62
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.

63
Marc Chagall Purim
64
Example of work considered degenerate

• The paintingthe Folkwang's only Chagallhad 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.

65

• 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.

66
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.

67
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
  much-needed 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.

68
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.

69
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.