German Expressionism

Books Expressionism

Many art books have been published on Expressionism, especially biographies on the big German artists of the first hour: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and later stars from several countries like Max Beckmann, Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Their bold paintings, crudely painted from feeling still resonates worldwide with that of other souls. Alexanders Artbooks Shop naturally carries books by the German and other Expressionists from renowned art book publishers such as Prestel, Taschen and Thames and Hudson. You'll find them on this page and the next in no particular order. Enjoy!

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880, Aschaffenburg - 1938, Davos), Painter and model, 1910 (re-worked 1926), oil on canvas, 150.4 x 100 cm, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

In the style of expressionism, what matters is not so much the sensory reality, but the artist's inner expression. The artist expresses his feelings and experiences. In expressionist artworks, the connection to reality fades to such an extent that new free forms, which arise during the making of the artwork, are given a chance. Only one law applies: that there are no laws, and therefore they cannot be imposed on the artist.

Not only can painted figures and objects undergo a change of form, making them barely recognisable, colours also take on an entirely unique emotional value in expressionist art. They can be completely detached from visually perceptible reality. Grass is no longer green, but red, for example, and the sky is no longer grey or blue, but purple or poison green. Expressionism was a widely used style at the beginning of the 20th century and was a reaction to the academicism of the 19th century, in which, according to the expressionists, too much painting was done according to intellectual rules rather than feeling.

Expressionism

by Art Historian Sander Kletter

Form and Coulour based on Feeling

Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter

Important representatives of expressionism from the early 20th century include the Die Brücke artists' group, founded in 1905 in Dresden, and the painting group Der Blaue Reiter, founded in Munich in 1911.

Founders of Die Brücke were architecture students Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl. Later join painters such as Otto Mueller, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde and Kees van Dongen. Man and landscape are the main motifs depicted by this group of artists. Their aim is ‘to paint natural life as such’ according to Erich Heckel. According to Otto Mueller, it was about ‘expressing feelings of landscape or people in as simple a way as possible.’ The Die Brücke group is known for its woodcuts. Emil Nolde left the group after only a short time, as he felt that work by the participants was becoming too similar. A good example of an expressionist painting is his Still Life with Dancers from 1914 (see image above). The group did not last long. In 1908, most of the members moved to Berlin, where the group disbanded in 1913

Der Blaue Reiter was founded by Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc and Alfred Kubin. The group was named after an equestrian piece Kandinsky had painted in 1903 (see image below). That painting is still painted very realistically in its colouring, but already bears traces of later Expressionism in the rough treatment of the paint and the coarseness of the form. Like many influential artists of his time, he visited Europe's major art centres, such as Paris. There he got to know artists of Fauvism, like Matisse and Derain. The expressive colour palette of the Fauvists particularly appealed to him. In 1905, he exhibited with the Fauvists at the Salon d'Automne, the major annual retrospective in Paris. The meeting with the fauvists and this experience inspired him to drastically change the colouring scheme of his paintings.

Emil Nolde, Still Life with dancers, 1914,
oil on canvas, 73 x 89 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris

Characteristic of expressionist art is the bright use of colour, distortions and capriciousness within the composition. Ignoring spatiality and disregarding perspective laws are also common in expressionist art. Human figures are not rendered plastically, but two-dimensionally ‘flat’ looking.
Even before the groups of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter were formed, there were several artists working individually, whose artworks showed characteristics of those of later expressionist art. In this context especially the Post Impressionist painters Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh should be mentioned. Expressionism as a style remained practised for a long time. In Groningen in The Netherlands, there was artists' association De Ploeg, founded in 1918. One of its members, Jan Wiegers met Kirchner at a Davos spa in Switzerland. They became friends and the spark of his inspired expressionism splashed over him. Back in Groningen, he transmitted it to the other members of De Ploeg.

Until around 1940, there were many artists, who, although not affiliated with a group, still achieved figurative expressionist art expressions individually. Artists in this context include Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Egon Schiele, the Flemish expressionists Constant Permeke and Gustave De Smet and the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The term expressionism is used after the early period of expressionism (1905 - 1914), to indicate that an artist paints primarily from his feelings, without following imposed laws or guidelines from others. This also applies to the artists of abstract expressionism after World War II. However, they painted abstract rather than figurative, like the expressionists of the first hour. In the 1980s, the expressionist fire flared up again with the movement of neo-expressionism, including artists such as Georg Baselitz, Walter Dahn and Max Lüpertz.

Individual Expressionists & Later Groups

Wassily Kandinsky (Moscow 1866 - Neuilly sur Seine 1944), The Blue Rider, 1903,
oil on canvas, 52.1 x 54.6 cm, Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, Zürich

Franz Marc (München, 1880 - Braquis 1916), Little Yellow Horses, 1912,
oil on canvas, 66 x 104 cm, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Paul Klee, August Macke and Heinrich Campendock were artists who regularly participated in the exhibitions of Der Blaue Reiter. The Russian Alexej von Jawlensky, who emigrated to Germany and was a good friend of Kandinsky, also occasionally participated in Der Blaue Reiter's exhibitions. The group's objective was idealistic, its members mainly wanting to maintain a bond of close friendship. There was no programme, there were no rules of style. In 1911 and 1912, Kandinsky and Franz Marc organised a touring exhibition in Germany under the responsibility of the editors of Der Blaue Reiter. They published an almanac on issues concerning modern art in 1912. In their exhibitions, they offered space to everything and everyone whose work struck them as important. It so happened that Pablo Picasso and Hans Arp, for instance, were also participants in some of their exhibitions. The group did not reach its idealised goal and soon disintegrated after the outbreak of World War I, in which both Macke and Marc died. They both died at a very young age, not even 30 years old.

Wassily Kandinsky (Moscow 1866 - Neuilly sur Seine 1944), Reiter (Lyrishes), 1911,
oil on canvas, 94 x 130 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam