Expressionism is considered more as an international tendency than a coherent art movement, which was particularly influential at the beginning of the twentieth century. It spanned various fields: art, literature, music, theatre and architecture. Expressionist artists sought to express emotional experience, rather than physical reality. Famous Expressionist paintings are Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Wassily Kandinsky’s Der Blaue Reiter, and Egon Schiele’s Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up.
Expressionism is a complex and vast term that has meant different things at different times. However, when we speak of Expressionist art, we tend to think either about the artistic tendency which followed as a reaction to Impressionism in France or about the movement which emerged in Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century. The term is so elastic that it can accommodate artists ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky.
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