Expressionism: freedom that we’ve lost
Sinking feeling
At the beginning of the 20th century Dadaists quarrel and arrange provocations, and “these guys” pour out a subjective vision of reality, many of their paintings are creepy, ominous. Reality in their eyes is deformed, there are kinks everywhere, dirty painful colours, large brushstrokes…
Die Brücke — The Bridge between past and present
On June 7, 1905 in Dresden, four architecture students — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rothful formed the art group “Die Brücke” (The Bridge) and decided to create a new kind of art, later known as German expressionism.
The name “Die Brücke” was coined by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. However, it’s unknown whether he was referring to the numerous bridges in Dresden, often used as subjects for his paintings, or if this name was a metaphor for overcoming old conventions in art.
The artists worked together in a butcher’s shop they rented. They painted their portraits, landscapes and genre scenes using plots taken from the street, and real lives of working-class people.
From the point of view of “Die Brücke”, the main goal of their work was not to display the external world, which seemed to be only a lifeless shell of truth, but the invisible “reality” that the artist feels. This movement in art, Herwart Walden, a Berlin art gallery owner and propagandist of avant-garde art, in 1911 gives the name “Expressionism” (from French expression), and which initially united both cubism and futurism.
Expressionist art is an art, regardless of the time of its creation, which adheres to this trend through various simplifications, displacements and exaggerations.
The Expressionists considered Post-impressionists (Fauvists) to be their predecessors.
Both Fauvists and the members of “Die Brücke” criticised impressionists for their joyful and festive vision of the world. In contrast with that, they portrayed a “decaying”, horrific reality of modern society and its ways.
Paul Cézanne began the process of defragmenting reality into geometric forms, which led to cubism, the reduction of forms to cylinders, cones and spheres, and the dissolution of volume from the most important moments of the composition. Layered color, overlapping colours with others, without the need for lines while working with blemishes. He did not use perspective, but the overlay of warm and cold tones created a sense of depth.
Paul Gauguin introduced a new concept between the pictorial plan and the depth of the picture, with flat and arbitrary colours. They have symbolic and decorative value. Thanks to them, plots and scenes are between reality and the fabulous and magical world. His stay in Tahiti provoked him to reflect his inner world (rather than to imitate reality) and lead to some form of primitivism, influenced by oceanic art.
Vincent van Gogh developed his work according to the criteria of exaltation. He is characterised by a lack of perspective, instability of objects and colours, disgusting arbitrariness that came from within the “artist”.
Despite the fact that at first glance, German Expressionism is difficult to distinguish from French Fauvism, “Die Brücke” pointed to the shortcomings of the latter.
Fauvists VS Expressionists
“Die Brücke” had its own philosophical agenda, they anticipated that the movement would lead to rebirth of the academic art. Fauvists couldn’t boast of such a thing.
Fauvists were criticised by “Die Brücke” for being more interested in decorative arts. Expressionists on the other hand thought that the spirit, not the form, is important.
Fauvists were looking for similarities between the colours of a painting and the colours of reality. Expressionists didn’t try to find a similarity of colours, they, on the contrary, tried to abstract from reality in order to express their emotions and emotional experiences.
Fauvists developed formal technical means of expression to convey the calmness of one’s mind. This was seriously criticised by Expressionists, since their goal was to evoke stormy emotions in the viewer and leave him indifferent to what is happening.
Der Blaue Reiter
Simultaneously, during the creation of the almanac “Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)”, Wassily Kandinsky, together with a group of young avant-garde artists, formed the international society under the same name in Munich and Murnau.
Together with Kandinsky, Franz Marc also stood at the origins of this association. “Der Blaue Reiter” was born in a conversation over a cup of coffee: both of them loved blue in the paintings, Mark — horses, and Kandinsky — riders.
The group included, in addition to Kandinsky and Mark Russian migrants Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Paul Klee, August Macke and Gabriele Münter.
The main goal of the organisations was liberation from the traditions of academic painting, openness to internationalism, attention to archaic, medieval and tribal art, to children’s drawing. Just what Expressionists proclaimed!
Fatal stability
When relative stability was established in the Weimar Republic after 1924, the vagueness of the ideals of the expressionists, their complicated language, the individualism of artistic manners, and the inability to constructive social criticism led to the decline of this movement.
“These guys” gave way to Dadaists and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
When Hitler came to power in 1933, expressionism was declared a “degenerate art” and its representatives lost the opportunity to exhibit their work or publish.
Nevertheless, individual artists continued to work within Expressionism for many decades. Of the major representatives of the current, only Oskar Kokoschka caught the revival of general interest in expressionism in the late 1970s.
Where is the tower of blue horses now?
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