2. Even early in his career, Corinth
painted the flesh of the nudes quite
roughly, leaving the brushstrokes
visible.
He painted the faces more smoothly,
but hair was never given the
appearance of strands.
As he career progressed the
application of the paint became
rougher.
From Romanticism to Expressionism:
Corinth and Modersohn-Becker
Lovis Corinth, Nude
Girl), 1886. Oil on
canvas. Minneapolis
Institute of Art,
Minneapolis, MN
3. In this self-portrait, Paula Modersohn–Becker
stares at the viewer with a steady gaze. She
holds two flowers, symbols of fertility.
She was a professional artist, and an important
figure of the 20th-century German avant-garde.
By avoiding idealization while painting herself
and other women, she changed the standards
of femininity in art.
By 1906, Modersohn-Becker had begun painting
life-sized nudes. Her most radical step was in
taking herself as a subject, becoming the first
modern woman artist to have painted nude self-
portraits.
This was one of her last paintings. The same
year she completed it, she died of
complications just 20 days after giving birth to a
daughter. She was 31 years old.
Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Self Portrait on her Sixth
Wedding Anniversary.
1906. Oil on canvas. Paula
Modersohn-Becker
Museum, Bremen.
4. Die Brücke (The Bridge) was an art movement later known as German
Expressionism. Die Brücke formed in Dresden in 1905 as a group of
artists who opposed the older, established social order of Germany.
The name of the group indicated the group's desire to "bridge" the
past and present.Their art , which embraced "primitive" modes of
expression, reflected feelings of alienation from the modern world.
This search for authentic emotion led artists to an expressive style
characterized by expressive use of color and form.
Die Brücke (The bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) are
typically seen as founders of German Expressionism. These were the
first two major groups that propelled German modern art onto the
international avant-garde scene.
The founding members of Die Brücke were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
Spanning the Divide Between Romanticism
and Expressionism: Die Brücke
5. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner has
considered one of the most
talented and influential of German
Expressionism.
Motivated by fears about
humanity's place in the modern
world, Kirchner took inspiration
from the modern city. At the time
he made this painting, Kirchner
was living in Dresden,
When the Nazis rose to power in
the early 1930s he became the
target of their campaign against
"Degenerate Art." Ill and depressed
from feeling marginalized, he
committed suicide.
Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Street, Dresden.
1908. Oil on canvas. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
6. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Seated Girl..
1910. Oil on canvas. Minneapolis
Institute of Arts.
This portrait with strong
outlines, articulates both
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's and
Die Brücke's intent to
express emotion.
This model is Lina Franziska
Fehrmann, the adolescent
model for Seated Girl. She
met Kirchner in 1910.
She and her siblings posed
for artists in the Die Brücke
group.
7. Emil Nolde was born in a small
German village close to the
Danish border, in 1902.
His simple, rural origin is
crucial to understanding the
artist’s work.
In 1906, the leaders of the Die
Brücke group, invited Nolde to
Dresden. This experience was
very influential on his artistic
direction.
Nolde’s participation in this
group was a catalyst on his
future art making and
established him as a master.
Nolde
Emil Nolde. The Last Supper. 1909. Oil
on canvas. Statens Museum for Kunst.
Copenhagen.
8. Emil Nolde added a special, mystical dimension to German
Expressionism. His career illustrates a number of the moral
dilemmas which faced German Modernists. His instincts were
nationalist and conservative even though his art was regarded as
experimental.
For Nolde the Third Reich brought defamation. His paintings were
confiscated from the museums and his work was a special focus of
the exhibition "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art").
From 1941 on he was prohibited from painting at all. Secretly he
painted small scale watercolours which he called "unpainted
pictures". After the war, between his eightieth and eightififth
birthday he gained various honors and awards. Nolde died in
Seebüll in 1956 .
9. In Heckel's woodcut Standing
Child, Franzi's is depicted with
angularity and simplification of
form.
The colors are flat with the white,
contrasting with the red and green
background tones.
Heckel made the eyebrows into
curves, a formal convention he
borrowed from non-Western masks
he studied in Dresden's
Ethnological Museum.
Heckel, Müller, Pechstein, and
Schmidt-Rottluff
Erich Keckel. Standing Child.
1910. Color woodcut. Los
Angeles County Museum of
Art.
10. In Indian and Woman, Max
Pechstein adopted a simple
compositions sombre color
scheme.
Like other artists of the Die
Brücke group, Pechstein had
an interest in the art of non-
European cultures.
Pechstein painted exotic
subjects in a deliberately
“primitive” manner.
Despite his more restrained
style the Nazis declared his
work “degenerate”
Max Pechstein, Indian and Woman,
1910.Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 in.
Saint Louis Art Museum.
11. In Self-Portrait with Monocle, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff uses brushstrokes
typical to many Die Brücke painters.
The artist represents himself in a
simplified background that consists
of an angular composition of flat
shapes in vibrant colors.
He depicted himself as a bohemian
intellectual, complete with a green
turtleneck.
The monocle is the focal point as it
is depicted in a stark white color,
which is not repeated anywhere else
in the painting.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Self-
Portrait with Monocle. 1910.
Oil on canvas. Staatliche
Museen, Berlin.
12. Die Brücke’s Collapse
The Brücke artists worked as a group until 1913. They played a pivotal
role in the development of Expressionism.
The group’s goal was to create an art that defied the conventions of
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The paintings and prints by
Die Brücke artists included a diverse subject matter, which consisted of
landscape, the human figure, and still life. They were all executed in a
simplified style in strong colors.
Like many avant-garde artists at the time, the Brücke artists were
attracted to art from Africa and the Pacific islands.
In 1913 the Brücke group disbanded, and that marked its end.
13. Der Blaue Reiter (German: “The Blue Rider”) group was neither a
movement nor a school. It was a loosely knit group of artists working
in Germany, that organized exhibitions of their work, between 1911
and 1914.
Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc were the leaders of the group.
The artists of this group contributed to the development of abstract
art. They began in Munich as an abstract counterpart to Die Brücke's
distorted figurative style.
Although both groups confronted feelings of alienation in an
increasingly modernizing world, Der Blaue Reiter sought to pursue
the spiritual value of art.
The Spiritual Dimensions of Der Blaue Reiter
14. Kandinsky
Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
was a pioneer of abstract art and eminent aesthetic theorist. In his art,
Kandinsky strove to use abstraction to give painting the freedom from
nature that he admired in music.
His discovery of a new subject matter based solely on the artist’s “inner
necessity” occupied him throughout his life. His pre–World War I treatise
Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art), published in
Munich in December 1911, describes his program for developing an art
independent of the external world.
On August, 3rd, 1914, Kandinsky moved to Switzerland where Kandinsky
started to work on the book about "point and line". By November of the
same year Kandinsky went to Moscow.
In the autumn of 1916 Kandinsky got acquainted with Nina
Andreevskaya, the daughter of the Russian General, and he married her
in February, 1917.
15. Vasily Kandinsky,
Composition VII, Oil on
canvas. 1913. State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Composition VII is kandinsky’s largest painting (at 6 by 10 feet). it is a
dynamic composition with very little reference to the real world. Kandinsky
believed that abstraction could provide spiritual rebirth. The widespread
destruction of World War I (1914-18) was perceived by many artists and
intellectuals as a literal apocalypse.
Wassily Kandinsky expressed his emotional perceptions through an
abstract style of painting that was based on the non-representational
properties of color and form. Kandinsky's compositions were the
culmination of his efforts to create a "pure painting".
16. Gabriele Münter, was a
German expressionist painter.
She studied with Wassily
Kandinsky and was a founding
member of the expressionist
group Der Blaue Reiter.
Gabriele Münter. Jawlensky
and Werefkin. Oil on canvas.
1908. Städtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus – Munich
Münter
17. Werefkin
Marianne von Werefkin was a member
of the Der Blaue Reiter.
Her Self-Portrait of 1910 exemplifies the
experimentation and the semi-abstract
manipulation of form and .
Her use of arbitrary color shows
influences of Paul Gauguin and Edvard
Munch.
Of note is the figure's confrontational
red-eyed gaze .
Marianne von Werefkin
Self-Portrait . c. 1910.
Oil on canvas. Städtische
Galerie im Lenbachhaus
und Kunstbau München,
Munich
18. Marc Franz. The large Blue Horses,
1911. Oil on canvas. Walker Art Center
Marc
By early 1911 Franz Marc had
developed a symbolism for his
use of color. In this, he followed
a pattern established earlier by
Wassily Kandinsky.
Animals in Marc's art are
seldom painted in isolation.
Franz Marc attributed spirituality
and maleness to blue, femininity
and sensuality to yellow, and
terrestrial materiality to red.
Marc painted animals as they
symbolized an age of
innocence, free from the
materialism and corruption of
his own time.
19. PE
Alexej von Jawlensky,
Madame Turandot. 1912.
Oil on canvas, Collection
Andreas Jawlensky,
Locarno, Switzerland.
Macke
August Macke was a German
painter and a leader in the
Expressionist group The Blue
Rider. He was a close friend of
Franz Marc, Paul Klee and Robert
Delaunay. Macke was killed in battle
during World War I. He was 27 year
old.
Jawlensky
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky
was a Russian expressionist
painter active in Germany in Der
Blaue Reiter(The Blue Rider) group.
20. Pau Klee made a dual contribution to
modern art: as artist and as scientist.
Klee worked on color with intuition and
emotion, which served to advance
theoretical research in this field.
He interpreted Robert Delaunay’s theory
of light and color in a very personal way,
turning it into his own pictorial poetic.
His compositions became more abstract,
while exhibiting greater freedom of
movement and gesture.
Values such as the dynamism of
movement and the relationship between
individual and cosmic energy began to
emerge.
Klee
Paul Klee. Senecio, 1922. Oil
on gauze with chalk ground.
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel
21. Klee experimented with color
theory, and wrote extensively about
it. His Writings on Form and Design
Theory, published in English as
the Paul Klee Notebooks
His works reflect his sometimes
childlike perspective, his personal
moods and beliefs, and his
musicality.
By 1917, Klee’s work was selling
well and art critics acclaimed him as
the best of the new German artists.
Paul Klee,
The Gold Fish, 1925
Oil and watercolor on paper
mounted on cardboard.
Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg,
Germany
22. Feininger
Lyonel Feininger was a member of
Der Blaue Reiter group, and he
taught at the Bauhaus, the
groundbreaking institution.
Feininger aligned his artistic goals
with the concepts of spirituality.
Influenced by the Cubist faceting
of forms, Feininger juxtaposes the
horizontals of the mole, the
verticals of the lighthouse, and the
dynamic diagonals to suggest a
raging storm. Although he employs
a monochromatic palette, like the
Cubists, Feininger includes reds
and blues in the center, which
creates balance.
Lyonel Feininger. Harbor Mole. 1913.
Oil on Canvas. Carnegie Museumof Art,
Pittsburgh.
23. Ernst Barlach. The Avenger,
modeled 1914, cast 1923
Bronze. Harvard Art
Museums.
First sculpted in 1914, is a
response to the Great War.
Expressionist Sculpture
Abstract Expressionism is often
associated with painting, but the
movement also included several
sculptors whose work challenged
traditional conventions of the medium.
Notable artists include David Smith,
who made open structures that defied
the heavy mass and volume usually
associated with sculpture, and Louise
Nevelson who created large scale
assemblages.
Like painters, sculptors also turned to
unconventional materials, as well as
less-common processes, such as
welding.
24. Egon Schiele was an Austrian major
figurative painter of the early 20th
century.
Schiele's work is noted for its
intensity. The expressive body shapes
in his paintings and drawings make
Schiele a notable exponent of
Expressionism.
Egon Schiele was born in Tulln on the
Danube. While an elementary
student, his art teacher recognized
and supported Schiele's artistic talent.
Self-Examination
Expressionism in Austria
Egon Schiele. Portrait Of
Albert Paris Von Gutersloh.
1918. Oil on Canvas.
Mineapolis Institute of Art.
25. Oskar Kokoschka. Portrait of Adolf
Loos. 1902. Oil on canvas. Schloss
Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany
Kokoshka
Oskar Kokoschka was an
Austrian artist and poet
known for his Expressionist
style. Characterized by
impasto and bright colors,
his artworks seem to be full
of energy.
An outspoken critic of the
Nazis and Fascism,
Kokoschka was concerned
about the fate of refugees,.
He believed that art could
affect change, and for that
reason, he never painted
completely abstract artworks.
31. As the co-founder and first president of
the Vienna Secession, Klimt ensured
that this movement would become
widely influential.
Klimt’s paintings share many formal
and thematic characteristics with the
Expressionists and Surrealists of the
interwar years.
Almost always, the extensive use of
patterns creates visual texture. Gustav Klimt. Detail of the
preparatory design by Gustav
Klimt for the mosaic friezes of
dining room of the Stoclet
Palace, Brussels.
