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German Expressionism. Early 20 th Century. German artists were aware of the developments taking place in France at the end of the 19 th Century and the beginning of the 20 th . They were influenced by the work of the Post Impressionists: Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Matisse.
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German Expressionism Early 20th Century
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Edvard Munch ( Norwegian)
Edvard Munch The Scream 1893
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.
Munch -The Scream • [Munch] used curved shapes and colors that are expressive rather than realistic. Everything is distorted to make you feel a certain way…there 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).
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 inFocus. 537).
How much his own suffering contributed to his work can be seen in a picture entitled The SickChild. 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 inFocus. 537)
Pictures like this shocked viewers when the paintings were first seen. Munch’s 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. Munch’s 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)
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.
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 Kirchner’s street scenes look anonymous. They are all feathers and finery and have lost their individual humanity. They seem to wear haughty masks.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner • Street Scene, Berlin • 1913
Kirchner News 1914
Kirchner • Women in Blue • 1913
The slashing diagonals and angular, attenuated shapes of these figures are characteristic of Kirchner’s style.
Kirchner • Potsdammer Platz • 1914
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.
Kathe • Kollwitz
Kollwitz • Poverty • 1893
Kollwitz • Woman with her dead child
Kollwitz • Seed for the • planting • shall not • be ground • up
Kollwitz • Woman Greeting Death • 1934
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 mother’s hand and will soon reach out for his. (Mittler. Art in Focus. 537)
Paula Modersohn • Becker
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)
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
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.
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.
Modersohn Becker was a highly expressive painter, whose work is characterized by rounded forms and decorative nature motifs.
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.
Paula Modersohn • Becker The Old Peasant Woman 1905
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.
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
Wassily Kandinsky Abstract Expressionism
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.
