AND THE BIRTH OF EXPRESSIONISM DIE BRUCKE AND THE BIRTH OF EXPRESSIONISM

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM The term Expressionism was probably first used in the way we understand it today. Expressionist artists, many of whom worked in Germany where we imagine the movement originated. Expressionist artists wanted to create art that confronted the viewer with an intense, direct and personal depiction of the artist’s state of mind. We know that it comprised of certain core elements: -linear distortion/ a reappraisal of the concept of beauty/ radical simplification of detail and bold colouration. Expressionist artists achieved a heightened sense of urgency through the use of non naturalistic colour and exaggerated, elongated forms.

The Expressionist Movement was associated predominantly with 2 groups of artists, one based in Dresden and the other in Munich- having many goals and influences in common. The artists wanted to distinguish themselves from the bourgeois urban society in which many had grown up in. Some of the artists lived communally in rural areas, where they developed a fascination for ‘primitive societies’ and collected and imitated German Folk art in an effort to rekindle art’s vital force. They were influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, who had worked in the Pacific Islands and had abandoned the use of realistic colours and often rendered his scenes as simple, flattened forms.

They were also looking back to the art of the German Renaissance- Albrecht Durer (15thC) and of course, Mathis Grunewald (c15th).

In the early 1900s, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner(1880-1938) an architect student from Dresden who was studying in Munich, visited an exhibition of contemporary German artists. He was deeply disappointed and described what he saw as “anaemic, bloodless and lifeless daubs”, adding that, “ it was quite obvious that the public was bored”. It helped him to take action, and back in Dresden in 1905, he formed an artists group with 3 fellow students who shared his love of painting- Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt- Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl. On Schmidt-Rottluff’s suggestion they called themselves ‘Die Brucke’...The Bridge, echoing Neitszche’s notion that life for mankind was not an end in itself but a bridge to a better future.

Like The Fauves, the Die Brucke attributed little importance to design, which they simplified and reduced to its essential elements, and put all their efforts instead into the communicative power of colours, sharply contrasting and packed with an intense, almost violent light. Like the Impressionists they sought to portray real life and nature in all its forms; but while the vision of the Impressionists was reassuring and untroubled, basically optimistic about life, the members of Die Brucke were restless, tormented, distressed. They did not share the ethics and values of the middle class, did not believe in positive optimism, nor in the illusion of a world of continuous progress thanks to the discoveries of science and technology. Instead they affirmed the subjective and the irrational values of art.

Instead they affirmed the subjective and the irrational values of art. They were convinced that human life was characterised by its emotional dimension and that the role of the artist was to express in images what could not be understood by means of concepts or words.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Nude” 1909

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner “Franzi in Front of a Carved Chair” 1910

Kirchner “Berlin Street Scene” 1913

Kirchner “Self Portrait as a Soldier” 1915

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff “Rosa Schapire” 1911

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff “Girl at the Mirror” 1915

Emil Nolde “Crucifixion” 1911