Theme 1: The Expressionism Question

The term “Expressionism question” comes from a series of articles published in Art in America in 1982-83. In the 1980s during the period of Neo-expressionism, critics wondered — is expressionism kitschy and gimmicky, or does it have substance?

The resurgence of painting and the resulting “expressionism question” directly followed conceptual art, minimalism and pop art, all movements in which artworks became intangible ideas rather than simply objects. Neo-expressionist painting returned to physicality, to the figure and to representations of human experiences. This was also called “The New Spirit,” a term taken from the first exhibitions of Neo-expressionism, presented in 1981 at the Royal Academy in London. Featured artists included Georg Baselitz, Anselm Keifer, Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel.

There were many contemporary critiques of Neo-expressionism in the 1980s, suggesting that these works were pandering to the market. Today, these paintings are very rarely exhibited, although the generation of artists who were influenced by Neo-expressionist painters are now becoming very popular.

Today, however, in terms of both art history and the market, there is a renewed interest in German Expressionism, and the art history of Modernism is also being re-interpreted. For example, at the new MoMA, which has historically ignored German Expressionist art, there is now an entire room dedicated to German and Austrian expressionism. These works have also been in the public eye more often lately, as many were stolen during WWII and are now the subject of restitution cases.

Theme 2: The Vienna Secession, and How Expressionism Became a German Movement

One of the common criticisms of Neo-expressionist paintings in the 1980s was that they were superficial. There is a history behind this criticism — German Expressionism grew out of and followed the Vienna Secession movement in Austria. In contrast to the traditional academy of history paintings, the Secession movement merged applied art and fine art. These works rejected categorization, simultaneously incorporating textiles, music, writing, gilding and decorative objects into fine art painting.

Gustav Klimt, for example, was groundbreaking in his combination of the emotional and psychological content of fine art painting with the decorative element. Installed in the Vienna Secession Building, Klimt’s Beethoven frieze encapsulates the idea of the “total work of art” or “Gesamtkunstwerk,” which is the idea that ideal artworks should not be medium-specific. Painting, music, literature, sculpture, etc. can and should be combined. The German composer Richard Wagner coined the term “Gesamtkunstwerk” because he thought of opera as more than music — it is the whole experience of being in the theater, seeing the costumes, being immersed in the stage design. Ultimately, the Vienna Secession artists wanted to make environments, not just paintings. 

In paintings by Neo-expressionist Sandro Chia (left) and German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (right), both incorporate the themes of mirror-images and narcissism. Both are painted in an expressionistic style, demonstrating the artist’s hand and using non-naturalistic colors.

Besides the Vienna Secession, another influence on German Expressionism was Fauvism. Fauvism was a movement in the early 1900s in Paris, and at first the term “expressionism” applied to these French artists. Fauvism and German Expressionism are both characterized by non-naturalistic color and psychological content, as well as the prioritization of the artist’s individual hand over creating illusionistic space. However, “expressionism” eventually became more associated with the German movement.

Finally, German Expressionists were also influenced by Van Gogh. He was unappreciated outside of avant-garde circles but hugely popular within them. German artists brought his ideas into their own artistic culture.

In this early modern period, European artists were looking at each other’s work. There were  new trade networks, as well as prints and magazines, so images could travel widely even when an artwork itself did not.

The 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne was one of the first large art-fair type exhibitions. In fact in 1913, The Armory Show was based directly on it, and the modern contemporary art fair model grew out of it. At the Sonderbund, there over 650 international contemporary artworks hung salon-style. Visitors could see Van Gogh from the Netherlands, Cezanne from France, Munch from Norway and Picasso from Spain all in one place. As a result, artists were actively incorporating international influences, including the German Expressionists.

Ultimately, however, German Expressionism would get filtered out as only German, and Anti-German sentiment would cause many of these artists and the movement at large to be overlooked for decades.

So, how did expressionism become a German movement? In 1914, Paul Fechter wrote the first monograph on expressionism, titled Der Expressionismus. He wanted to differentiate the contemporary German style versus the foreign French/Impressionist influence. For example, the first president of the Berlin Secession, Max Liebermann, was previously an Impressionist painter. In his painting above (left), he depicts a street scene with soft light and illusionistic space. In contrast (above right), Kirchner’s painting is a quintessential German Expressionist work. There is no entry point into the space of the painting — the figures are depicted straight-on while the sidewalk is depicted from above. The sense of space reflects the fast pace and anxiety of modern city life — there is a huge crowd but no sense of warmth or interaction. 

 Kirchner particularly liked to use a new kind of alkaline-based paint straight from the tube, without mixing it, to maintain its vibrance. Color was very important to him, and he would often re-work paintings to correct the colors and ensure the pigments didn’t fade or yellow over time.

Fechter differentiated two strands of German Expressionism, what he called “extensive” expressionism (depicting nature and life) and “intensive” expressionism (abstractly depicting spirituality and emotion). So, ultimately there are two main schools: Die Brücke and Der Blau Reiter.

To note, Fechter left out an important female German expressionist painter, who worked outside both of these schools — Paula Modersohn-Becker. She lived and worked in an artist colony in Worpswede, and she is the first woman known to paint a nude self-portrait. This was, of course, very different from the kinds of nudes being painted by male artists at the time — Modersohn-Becker did not paint herself as a model but as an artist in control of her image. Sadly, Modersohn -Becker died shortly after childbirth, and she was not recognized in art history until recently.

Theme 3: Die Brücke

Die Brücke translates to “The Bridge.” It was formed by a group of Bohemian architecture students living in Dresden, only one of whom actually had any fine arts training, and it was one of the first groups to write a manifesto to articulate their ideas and then follow that with artwork that furthered their concepts. Die Brücke aimed to create art along the theme of “bridging” the present to the past. For example, Die Brücke artists often worked with woodcuts because printmaking is a German tradition.

The image of “the bridge” comes from Nietzche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. One of the main ideas of the book is the Übermensch, a self-mastered individual. Man is perpetually in the process of becoming an Übermensch — always on the bridge, caught in an in-between state. There is no other side of the bridge — man is continually between the past and the future.

Die Brücke consisted of a core group of artists but at one point had up to 80 members — the 4 original core members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Every year as a group, they would distribute a portfolio of prints to their members in order to publicize and disseminate their work. 

Die Brücke’s first group exhibition was held in 1906 inside a lamp factory, showing their work alongside lighting fixtures. This setting recalls the Vienna Secession, which combined fine and decorative arts, as well as early modern ideas about finding new ways of exhibiting and thinking about art.

Like German Expressionism overall, Die Brücke is characterized by non-naturalistic color, gestural brushstrokes that emphasize the idiosyncrasy of the artist’s hand, twisted figures and uncomfortably flattened space. The figures are more sculptural than humanly possible. The work expresses subjective emotion, often angst.

Die Brücke were also interested in primitivism and Non-Western visual sources. Nudity, to them, symbolized sexual liberty. The fabric in the background of Kirchner’s 1909 painting Girl with a Japanese umbrella (above right) shows his studio, a brightly colored and patterned space with Asian fabrics. People would spend time together at his studio, women would dance, writers would read poetry — it was a creative communal space. Kirchner would also often recreate Non-Western artifacts and artworks, like a Greek caryatid sculpture that he carved out of wood himself. But, Die Brücke artists mixed these foreign cultures – African and Oceanic and Asian — all together, because they were looking at them formally rather than culturally. 

This interest relates to Paul Gauguin’s paintings of Oceanic women, which similarly used non-naturalistic color and thematically explored primitivism. However, Die Brücke were a bit more formally advanced – there is a dynamic sense of space and distortion in their work, rather than pure flatness. They were also influenced by Matisse and even invited him to join them! Ultimately, the group was German, but they did want to become more international. 

Die Brücke also went outdoors and painted nudes in nature, referencing the subject matter of German Old Masters. The Expressionists treated these nude figures the same way as the landscape, with non-naturalistic colors that metaphorically expressed psychological states.

Die Brücke was based in Dresden until 1911 and then moved to Berlin, at which point the group began to splinter. (It fully disbanded with the arrival of WWI.) After the move to urban Berlin, the artists began to depict street scenes, and their forms became more angular. Kirchner actually became most known for his paintings of Berlin city life. His colors can be interpreted as reflecting the advent of electric light, becoming brighter and more dissonant, even garish. He also flipped his compositions from horizontal to vertical, giving them a more uncomfortable and compressed effect.

In general, the German Expressionists loved self-portraits, relating to the idea of the individual and the subjectivity of the artist. Kirchner became well-known for two of his self-portraits in particular, one as a soldier in 1915 during WWI and later one while sick during the Spanish influenza of 1918. The war devastated him, and he was never the same. In his self-portrait as a soldier, he has metaphorically cut off his painting hand — he suggests that he has lost his ability to paint (he was not actually physically injured in the war). A limp cigarette hangs from his mouth.

Kirchner was also featured prominently in the Degenerate Art Exhibition organized by the Nazi Party in 1937, which greatly upset him – he thought of himself as a proudly German artist, but national socialists criticized him for not being patriotic. He had 32 works included in the show and more than 600 of his works were removed from public collections at the time. The Degenerate Art Exhibition was meant to ridicule the art that was “bad” and contrary to German values, but instead it attracted so many visitors and was the first time that all of these German Expressionists had shown together. It solidified their fame and their image a collective. However, Kirchner was traumatized. He became an alcoholic, was sent to a sanatorium and eventually committed suicide in 1938. 

This painting (The Four Elements: Fire, Earth, and Water, Air by Adolf Ziegler, 1937) that hung in Hitler’s Munich apartment as the perfect example of German art. In contrast to the Expressionists’ distinctively modern images, it is a “timeless” painting and depicts German society and culture as an ideal. In contrast, Kirchner’s scenes are very much of the moment, expressing the anxiety of the modern city at a distinct point in time, and the Expressionists’ self-portraits and emphasis on emotional content are very individualistic.

Theme 4: Der Blau Reiter and the Birth of Abstraction

 Begun in Munich in 1911, Der Blau Reiter was a very short-lived movement. In contrast to Die Brücke, it was a more international group and more inclusive. There were Russian artists involved, as well as women like Gabrielle Münter.

The name “Blue Rider” comes from a Russian folk tale based on the conversion of St. George, a knight who saved a maiden from a dragon and converted a whole village to Christianity. Wassily Kandinsky was obsessed with the idea of the artist as the “blue rider,” not as a religious metaphor but as a grand utopian ideal — the artist as the converter of society to a new enlightenment and new way of life. Der Blau Reiter wanted to change the world, not just create a lifestyle. They believed the world could be reborn in a positive way.

In contrast to Die Brücke, which was focused on depicting the real world, Der Blau Reiter was interested in the spiritual, or “intensive” as Fechter described it.

Der Blau Reiter was also influenced by the Vienna Secession and the idea of the “total work of art.” One of Kandinsky’s techniques involved outlining forms and then building up veils of color, creating a transparent effect. This was inspired by his exposure to the technique of painting onto glass, a German folk tradition. So, his work was not derived from purely fine art sources.

Kandinsky was also interested in synesthesia and creating a multifaceted experience of visual art. He was influenced by music and the concept of seeing a sound. For example, the color blue is meant to soothe and transcend, and red elicits destructive energy. 

Kandinsky wanted to guide the viewer to a spiritual experience, rather than relate to something in reality.

Gabrielle Münter depicts the blue mountains  in Murnau. She and Kandinsky lived and worked together for many years. This blue mountain repeatedly appears in their work as a symbol of enlightenment, but it is also a literal reference to the landscape surrounding them. In the painting in the middle, Münter depicts herself rowing the boat while Kandinsky looks directly at the viewer — she depicts herself in a position of control.

On the right, Franz Marc imagines harmony between the human and animal realms. Both Münter and Marc stuck with the figure, but Kandinsky gradually went completely abstract in his work.

Kandinsky’s famous painting Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II) (above left) was made directly after he saw Matisse’s painting Joy of Life (above right). In this work he depicts one of his recurring subjects, the Garden of Eden, and there is a sense of visual movement in the work — the eye does not rest on a particular part of the canvas. Improvisation 27 was shown at The Armory Show, where it was purchased by Alfred Stieglitz. The two began writing to each other and later Stieglitz published Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual In Art in English.

 Kandinsky’s abstraction is rooted in reality, slowly growing out of his figurative work and his most common themes — the Garden of Eden, Last Judgment and apocalypse. For example, he was interested in the story of the great flood and Noah’s ark as a metaphor for the world’s rebirth. Once he arrived at full abstraction, his work was still imbued with this spiritual content but now focused more about the visual and emotional experience, rather than literal references.

Kandinsky’s first true abstract painting was Composition VII, which is held in the collection of The State Tretyakov Gallery in Russia. (This is not the first true abstract painting in history, however.) His apocalyptic themes are still present in Composition VII, with explosions of form and color, but it is truly abstract as the forms cannot be definitively identified. This work is also monumentally sized at 78.7 x 118.1 inches (200.0 x 300.0 cm) — it consumes the viewer.

Alfred Barr was the first to use the term “abstract expressionism,” to describe German art. This cut out Die Brücke from the historiography, as it was the figurative strain of German Expressionism. Barr prioritized Cubism as the foundation for almost all modern art.

In the 1940s, The New York School painters were definitely exposed to Kandinsky’s paintings and writings. His influence can be observed in the prevalent use of large, abstract paintings that immerse the viewer — consequently, Abstract Expressionism can be linked to German Expressionism. Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner all used line in different ways and applied paint in various methods, but they were all similarly interested in abstract painting as an experience.

Theme 5: Neo-Expressionism & the Future of Expressionism

Neo-expressionism and the return of painting were reactions to conceptual art. To note, some of these Neo-Expressionist artists were from Germany and were therefore aware of the overlooked history of German Expressionism.

Georg Baselitz, for example, is from Dresden, the city of Die Brücke. One of his most well-known paintings depicts Die Brücke artists, with Kirchner on the left. Baselitz uses the electric colors and gestural brushstrokes to formally reference expressionism, and he then turns his canvas  upside down, creating an even more disorienting sense of space. Like Die Brücke, he “bridges” the past to the present. Critically, on the one hand, there is expressive and intellectual content, while on the other hand flipping the canvases is gimmicky.

In the 1980s, artists turned to figuration as the vehicle for exploring subjective human experience, in direct opposition to conceptualism which emphasized intangible ideas. Anselm Kiefer, Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia and Julian Schnabel can all be linked to Neo-expressionism. With some exceptions, the Neo-expressionists were not critically popular at the time, and many have all but disappeared from art history. Chia, for example, has work in prestigious collections such as MoMA and the Tate, but his works are almost never on display now.

However, as expressionism has begun to be reevaluated, it has also begun to resurge. In the contemporary art scene, Georg Baselitz had a 2019 show at Gagosian Gallery of his “Devotion paintings,” a series of upside-down portraits of all of the icons of modern art. Baselitz included several key figures of German Expressionism alongside key figures of Abstract Expressionism, calling attention to the connection between the two movements.

So, where expressionism is headed now? A 1995 painting by Rudolf Stingel, sold at Sotheby’s in November 2019, may provide an interesting model. In this work, the public was invited to carve and write on the surface. Stingel plays with the boundaries between authorship and viewership — the painting is conceived by him but completed by viewer interaction. The expressive element of the artist’s hand has now been given to the viewer. This painting is developed from expressionism but it is participatory, incorporating the contemporary model of interactive work.

What happens when expressionism is mixed with the participation model, which comes from Minimalism and installation art? What will the new thread of expressionism be? Will it continue to incorporate the viewer’s interaction?