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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 Munchare 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 Schmidt-Rottluff 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 (1884-1976), ``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.
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 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.
Max Beckmann1884-1950 • 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
