Expressionism Art Movement – Characteristics

How to identify Expressionist art (1905-1925)?

1. People, places and objects are distorted or exaggerated. Even nature is sometimes distorted. The scenes show a modern world which is hostile and alienating. The sinister feeling is amplified by aggressive and raw brush strokes.

Starry Night by Van Gogh

Street, Dresden by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

The Night (Die Nacht) by Max Beckmann

2. People seem sickly or in emotional pain and anguish. The faces are always gloomy. You never find conventional beauty in Expressionist art!

Puberty by Edvard Munch

Cardplaying War-Cripples by Otto Dix

Self-Portrait (Man Twisting Arm Around Head) by Egon Schiele

Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch

3. Like Fauvism, colors are unrealistic but Expressionists were not obsessed with red. The unnatural colors are often dark to “express” their feelings about the modern world. Someone once labelled Expressionism as “fauvism with dark glasses.” Edvard Munch’s masterpiece is an example: In his own words he “painted the clouds like real blood.”

The Scream by Edvard Munch

The Tower of Blue Horses by Franz Marc

4. Expressionist art is similar to the Symbolist, the scenes are eerie or nightmarish but you can tell them apart: Expressionist perspective, similar to people and objects, is distorted. Also shapes and forms usually lack much detail.

Self-Portrait as a Soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

The Last Supper by Emil Nolde

Cardinal and Nun by Egon Schiele

How Expressionist art got its name? and where?

The roots of Expressionism were in Germany, hence it’s sometimes referred to as German Expressionism. The label was used first by German art critic Herwarth Walden in his magazine, Der Sturm (German, “The Storm”), which was published between 1910 and 1932.

What gave rise to Expressionism?

Europe was not a happy place for everyone around the end of the 19th century. The social changes due to rapid industrialization resulted in a generation suffering from alienation and anxiety. Artists experimented with ways to express their perception of the world as dark and hostile. It would only get worse for them and that generation would be maimed by a world war (1914 – 1918) which they mainly saw as pointless. That’s the period that the Expressionist art movement spans, from the beginning of the new century till a few years after the war. Artists did not see conventional beauty, hence they never portrayed it. If their artworks seem disturbing, it’s because that’s exactly how they felt: disturbed.

One early group gathered in Dresden, Germany, around the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938). They called themselves Die Brücke (The Bridge) viewing their art as a bridge between classic works from the old masters and the art of the future. Expressionism expanded beyond painting, into other forms of art like music and literature. It also emerged in other parts of Europe and inspired giants like Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch and James Ensor. Some well-known First World War soldiers, traumatized by their horrific experiences, later became artists. Two famous examples were Otto Dix and Max Beckmann (view their paintings here). Those were artists for whom distorted, disfigured, bodies were not just metaphors on canvases, that was the reality of their “fortunate” fellow soldiers who made it out alive from the war. An iconic example is Cardplaying War-Cripples by Otto Dix here.

Expressionist artists bravely put on display the existential anxiety of their era and the search for meaning in the rubble. They shared with the viewers their struggles with melancholy, isolation and depression. They viewed the modern city as a gloomy and scary place, which was evident in paintings like Street, Dresden by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner or The Scream by Edvard Munch (view paintings here). Franz Marc was an artist who went even further and painted only animals. In his view, flawed humans were not worthy of depiction compared to noble animals such as horses (view The Tower of Blue Horses here).

How do you depict a reality that you find unjust and distorted beyond normal? The artists distorted all on their paintings: figures, faces, perspective, brushwork and color. The Expressionists could convey powerful sentiments by how he handled the paint (thick brush strokes), as an example.

Like other art movements of that era (Fauvism and Impressionism), Expressionism continued to fill in the gaps found in the emerging medium of photography. Photography could not be but an accurate representation of reality. Expressionist art however ventured into the opposite direction by reshaping reality according to how artists perceived it. Unlike photographs, their paintings showed less details, broad shapes and forms and unnatural colors. Photographs were, and still are, deceptive since they do not convey feelings, which the premise of the entire Expressionist movement.

Rebels of a new generation

Expressionist artists found inspiration in the Fauve play with color and the Symbolist dark themes. However, they did not view favorably all their predecessors. In fact, one could view Expressionist art as a response to the popular and mainstream art movement of the previous generation: Impressionism. It’s easy to find harmony, beauty and peace in Impressionist artworks, all of which are absent in Expressionism. For the Impressionist, color was a visual instrument, but for the Fauves and the Expressionists it was an emotional instrument. The Impressionist captures a particular moment in time, but the Expressionist cares to capture only feelings, most of which were intensely negative.

Life was cruel for most of the Expressionist artists and it continued to be so even to their last breaths. Eventually when the Nazis took over Germany, the cradle of Expressionism, they suppressed it as a degenerate art. In 1937, they destroyed hundreds of works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, one of the founders of the art movement. The following year, he committed suicide. Van Gogh was known to be mentally unstable and also committed suicide. Edvard Munch, who lived a long, successful life said: “For as long as I can remember, I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety.” He endured a nervous breakdown in 1909. Otto Dix was injured several times during his 3-year service during the World War and eventually was discharged. He suffered from nightmares revisiting the carnage he witnessed for the rest of his life. Franz Marc struggled with depression for several years. As his luck would have it, he would be enlisted in the War, and during one of its battles he received an injury to the head killing him instantly at the age of 36 in 1916.