Expressionism: 1905-1925

The term ‘Expressionism’ was first used in 1911 at a Fauvist and Cubist exhibition in Berlin. It denotes an art form in which reality has been distorted and exaggerated for emotional effect. Expressionist art attempted to gauge their own response to the objects and events around them so that they could articulate spontaneous emotional sensations through works of fantasy and primitivism. Typically this was done through combining intense colours with agitated or violent brushstrokes and disjointed space. As such, it was a movement in which objective reality was displaced by subjective emotions, with the consequence that a long-lasting climate of self-expression spread from the fine arts to dance, cinema, theatre and literature.

In opposition to Impressionism, the aim of Expressionism was not to replicate an impression inferred by the surrounding world, but rather to enforce the artist's own emotional response to the world's representation so as to distinguish its true meaning. Harmony, form and naturalism gave way to the pursuit of a higher expressive intensity, with the result that many artists of the time looked towards non-European and primitive art forms for inspiration. In addition, there was a new appreciation of folk art following a belief that spontaneous feeling was strongest where intellect and training weren’t as apparent. A spiritual element reflecting this can be witnessed in the work of Kandinsky, Rouault and Nolde for example.

Expressionism prevailed in Germany in 1910, and as an international movement, it was thought to inherit many medieval concepts in addition to drawing inspiration from Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh (famous for many paintings, especially his self portraits) and Fauvism. Yet despite these links with the past, Expressionists developed pioneering modernistic styles in their work, with artists like Marc and Feininger producing Cubist elements and Kandinsky showing early examples of abstraction.

Modernist sympathies however were not expressed in the chosen subject matter, with the First World War, corruption in politics and the immorality of the industrial city providing the unhappy sources from which the artists either fled to escapism or embraced through an alienation similar to that expressed by Dada and later by the Abstract Expressionists.