The art world has been evolving since the origin of mankind. Throughout history, artists have produced art in a variety of media and styles, following different philosophies and concepts. They are adapting and constantly coming up with new art styles. And that occurs an art movement; but what is it? An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or concept, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time (say for a couple of years or so). Many movements happened in art, but ‘Expressionism’ changed the entire language of the art.
Expressionism is a modern movement in which artists seek to depict not the objective reality but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person. In simple words, the word ‘Expressionism‘ tells everything about the movement and the style, which is to express emotions. In this style, artists accomplish their aim through fantasy, distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and even with the application of dynamic, vivid, and violent formal elements. It is considered one of the main movements in art in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This can also be seen as the permanent tendency in Germanic and Nordic art from the European Middle Ages, particularly in times of social change and spiritual crisis. It can be described as a distinct style or movement that refers to several German artists as well as Austrian, French, and Russian artists. Expressionism developed as The Avant-Garde style before World War I and it remained popular during the Weimar Republic, especially in Berlin.
he Starry Night, oil on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, 1889; in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Image source: History Archive/REX/Shutterstock.com
The Scream, tempera and casein on cardboard by Edvard Munch, 1893; in the National Gallery, Oslo. Image Source: Børre Høstland/The Fine Art Collections, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
Indian and Woman, oil on canvas by Max Pechstein, 1910; in the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. Image Source: The Saint Louis Art Museum, bequest of Morton D. May
There are many tales about the origin of Expressionism. People believe that the roots of the German Expressionist lay in the works of Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor. These expressionist artists used the expressive possibilities of colors and lines to explore the dramatic and emotional themes to convey the different qualities like fear and horror. They broke the literal representation of nature to express more subjective outlooks. It is also believed that the principal wave of expressionism began around 1905 when a group of German artists formed a loose association called Die Brücke.
Eventually, the German expressionists developed a style that is notable for its harshness, boldness, and visual intensity. Many of their works express the frustration, anxiety, disgust, violence, discontent, and frenetic intensity of feeling in response to the ugliness and the crude banality. Later, expressionism stimulated in the other parts of Europe and it started developing. Some artists just adopted the tortured brushwork and angular lines from that; some just developed it with the intense emotional expression and some developed a more pointed, socially critical blend of expressionism and realism; those styles were later called Abstract Expressionism and Neo-Expressionism.
Expressionism also expanded to other forms of art, such as architecture, literature, theatre, dance, film, and music. Expressionism in literature arose as a reaction against materialism, rapid mechanisation and urbanisation, and the domination of the family within pre-World War I European society. In forging a drama of social protest, expressionist writers aimed to convey their ideas through a new style and the concern of the expressionists was with the truth rather than the particular situations. In architecture, it developed between 1910 to 1924 among a group of architects from European countries. The buildings were designed to evoke inner feelings and extreme emotions. In dance it arouse in the 1900s as a protest against the artistic stagnation of classical ballet and the new dance form which arrived through this was freer, natural, and less rule-governed.
Left: Expressionism in Dance, Middle: Expressionism in drama, Right: Expressionism in Architecture
Expressionism was an extremely important movement because it changed the purpose and standards of art in the history of art. Because of the movement, Expressionist artists started expressing their subjective inner emotions, fantasies, or thoughts independent from reality, rather than trying to accurately represent the world, as all the artists had been doing since the Renaissance. Therefore, Expressionism can be seen as a rejection of the Impressionism movement that came before it and a precursor to Abstract art.