CategoriesStyles and Movements
German Expressionism
The German branch of Expressionism, from the Brücke and Blue Rider groups before 1914 to the harsher art of the war years and after.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for German Expressionism are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
German Expressionism took shape in two groups before the First World War. Die Brücke, founded in Dresden in 1905, painted nudes, streets and bathers in raw colour and cut stark woodcuts. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), formed in Munich in 1911 around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, looked for spiritual meaning in colour: Marc's blue horses carry symbolic weight, and Kandinsky moved towards full abstraction. August Macke painted gentler, luminous scenes of strollers and shop windows.
The war ended that first phase. Macke and Marc were killed, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner suffered a breakdown after brief military service. Afterwards many turned to politics, and some to the cooler New Objectivity. In 1937 the Nazi regime confiscated modern works from German museums and paraded many in the touring Degenerate Art exhibition. Even Emil Nolde, a party member, was condemned and later forbidden to paint.
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