COMMONWEALTH ASSOCATION FOR
EDUCATION, ADMINISTRATION AND
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VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2
ISSN NO 2322-0147
OCTOBER
2013
Article – German Expressionism
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Article – German Expressionism
Author: Ramkrishna Ghosh
Ph.D.Rsearch Scholar
MEWAR UNIVERSITY,
GANGRAR,
CHITTORGARH (RAJASTHAN)
Abstract
Germany Expressionism generally refers to a twentieth century art movement that began in.
German Expressionism is perhaps the most complex, divers and saddest movement ever to be
included in the history of Modern Art. This movement was not limited strictly to the field of
painting: the philosophies and goals touched the lives of every artist whether they were involved
in the fields of literature, drama, stage design, dance or film. Initially, German artists used the
idiom “Expressionism’’ as a means to convey their artistic philosophy and practice. However,
the phrase would eventually be applied to represent any approach to art that would demonstrate a
distorted reality as well as a depiction of the artist’s mental state of being. Expressionism is not
primarily driven by technique, but a desire to express emotion. Expressionism concentrates on
emotion. Real form is shown little consideration, the aim is to show expression.
Expressionism and its impact on German
Expressionism, in the visual, literary, and performing arts, a movement or tendency that strives
to express subjective feelings and emotions rather than to depict reality or nature objectively.
The movement developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reaction against the
academic standards that had prevailed in Europe since the Renaissance (1300-1600), particularly
in French and German art academies. In expressionism the artist tries to present an emotional
experience in its most compelling form. The artist is not concerned with reality as it appears but
with its inner nature and with the emotions aroused by the subject. To achieve these ends, the
subject is frequently caricatured, exaggerated, distorted, or otherwise altered in order to stress the
emotional experience in its most intense and concentrated form.
Expressionism generally refers to a twentieth century art movement that began in Germany.
Unlike the French impressionists, who were primarily concerned with artistic technique to create
a different effect, Expressionism is not primarily driven by technique, but a desire to express
emotion. Expressionism concentrates on emotion. Real form is shown little consideration, the
aim is to show expression. Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an
emotional effect; it is a subjective art form. Also, unlike Impressionism, which was limited
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primarily to painting, Expressionism spread to many art forms, including not only painting, but
literature, film, architecture and music. The term may apply to any emotional expression, but it
was particularly associated with the expression of angst --- the number of cheerful expressionist
works is relatively small.
Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained
popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range
of the arts, including painting, sculpture, dance, cinema, literature, drama, poetry, prose, music,
architecture.
The artists of Die Brucke were among the first German nationalists to be called “Expressionists.”
Founded in Dresden in June 1905, these artists were considered provocative and revolutionary in
their use of brilliant clashing colors and jagged brushstrokes.
These former architects—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Hans
Bleyl–were inspired by Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra in which the artist was portrayed as
the aggressive leader of a new morality. These artists formed a “bridge” to other intellectuals
and called for a renewal toward a freer and more vital age, using their anti-naturalistic and
symbolic images as a call to arms. Although the bright colors were reminiscent of Fauvism, they
also recalled Vincent van Gogh. The jagged forms were very German, evoking Medieval
expressionism in their intensity. However, in the early halcyon days in Dresden, the jagged
forms were more stylistic, suggesting youthful activity rather than any specific feelings. Later,
when the group moved to Berlin, the sharp vertical slashes were linked to modern angst and
alienation.
The movement is primarily German. The Blaue Reiter was based in Munich and Die Brucke was
based originally in Dresden (although some later moved to Berlin). Die Brucke was active for a
longer period than Blaue Reiter which was only truly together for a year (1912). The
expressionists had many influences, among them Munch, Van Gogh, primitive African art and
they also came to know the work being done by the Fauves in Paris. It is important to realize that
although the Fauves and the Expressionist both used bright colours, they used them for distinct
purposes, the Fauves hoped to achieve beauty, the Expressionists hoped to achieve emotion
through them. The importance of color was its expressive power, no longer was the subject the
medium which led to drama or sentiment in the work of art, but it was the use of color and lines
that were the expressive and powerful means. The Blaue Reiter "leader", Kandinsky, would take
this a step further. He believed that with simple colors and shapes the spectator could perceive
the moods and feelings in the paintings, therefore he made the important jump to Abstraction,
changing 20th century art.
German Expressionism began as a reaction to the conditions of Wilhelminian Germany; a
rejection of the pre-war German bourgeois culture as chronicled in the likes of Thomas Mann’s
Magic Mountain. Young intellectuals felt excluded and classless in a complacent, materialistic
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Germany. Expressionism began as a turn away industrialisation, mechanization, and from
patriarchy in the broader sense. The German Expressionists moved towards ‘primitive art’ as a
model of abstraction, or non representational, non-academic, non-bourgeois art of existential
immediacy.
The expressionist notion of primitivism is widely attributed to Carl Einstein, whose book
Negerplastik, published at the start of World War 1, was the first to recognise African sculpture
as an aesthetic art form. Primitivism in German Expressionism stands in relation to German
colonial practice in Africa. It served as a decolonization of the mind of the German avant-garde
from its bourgeois, imperialist upbringing. The embracing of primitivism is a rejection, by the
Expressionists, of Wilhelmein Germany and all it represented. It was also (again based on a
certain reading of African art, and on Nietzsche’s ambiguous terms) a rejection of reason as a
means to truth; ‘Let us murder reason,’ says Einstein’s ‘Bebuquin’, ‘reason has created the
shapeless death in which there is nothing to see.’
German Expressionism is perhaps the most complex, divers and saddest movement ever to be
included in the history of Modern Art. This movement was not limited strictly to the field of
painting: the philosophies and goals touched the lives of every artist whether they were involved
in the fields of literature, drama, stage design, dance or film.
Initially, German artists used the idiom “Expressionism’’ as a means to convey their artistic
philosophy and practice. However, the phrase would eventually be applied to represent any
approach to art that would demonstrate a distorted reality as well as a depiction of the artist’s
mental state of being.
The German Expressionist movement in painting started from about 1905 with Die Brucke (The
Bridge) group in Berlin, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich from around 1911.
The German (Austrian) Expressionists combined geometric shapes and colors anew to create a
phenomenon of vitality and artistic force. The intensity of color was transferred to canvas by
frayed nerves exhibiting an ugly reality. The symbolic value of colors asserted independence,
and explosion of sensation. As Kandinsky said: "A work of art consists of two elements, the
inner and the outer. The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist; this emotion has the
capacity to evoke a similar emotion in the observer"(qtd. in Read 171).
Drama too was part of the Expressionist movement in Germany. German Expressionist film
making is probably the best known part of movement.
By the end of the Second World War German Expressionism would consist of three distinctive
and different camps: each with their own philosophies and goals.The first and perhaps the most
influential of these three camps was the “Die Brucke,’’ or The Bridge, as these artists, influenced
by Freudian theories, believed that their movement was a bridge towards a better future.
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When it came to philosophies and ideology these expressionists shared identical views. As the
term “Expressionist’’ suggest, the works crated by these artists were done as they had actually
been interpreted in the field. The use of unaltered nudes, as well as a variety of other people
portrayed in natural surroundings now yet tainted by the industrialization of Germany.
References
 A B Victorino Tejera, 1966, pages 85,140, Art and Human Intelligence, Vision Press
Limited, London.
 Bruce Thompson, University of California, Santa Cruz, lecture on WEIMAR
CULTURE/KAFKA'S PRAGUE
 Boorman, Helen, “Rethinking the Expressionist Era; Willhelmine Cultural Debates and
Prussian Elements in German Expressionism,” Oxford Art Journal, 9:2 (1986), 3.
 Benjamin, Walter (1998). Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso. ISBN 978-185984-899-9.
 cited in Donald E. Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Ideas. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987, p. 175.
 Chris Baldick Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, entry for Expressionism
 Donahue, Neil H., “Introduction,” A Companion to the Literature of German
Expressionism, Camden House: New York, 2005, 9.
 Gruber, Helmut, “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism,” The German
Quarterly, 40:2 (1967), 187.
 Ian Buruma, "Desire in Berlin", New York Review of Books, December 8, 2008, p. 19.
 Judith Bookbinder, Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism
(Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire Press ; Hanover : University Press of New
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 Ken Worpole, Dockers and Detectives. London: Verso Editionsd, 1983, pp. 77-93.
 Klarmann, Adolf D. "Expressionism In German Literature: A Retrospect of a Half
Century." Modern Language Quarterly 26.1 (1965): 70.
 Michel Ragon (1968) Expressionism quotation: There is no doubt that Expressionism is
Baroque in essence.
 Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,
(New York School Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. pp. 46-49; pp. 62-65; pp. 70-73;
pp. 74-77; pp. 94-97; 262-264.
 R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, pp.2-14; Willett, pp. 20-24.
 Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the
Problem of Postmodernity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, p.43.
 Sheila Watson, Wyndham Lewis Expressionist. Ph.D Thesis, University of Toronto,
1965.
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 Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary
Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, pp.141-162.
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