The 20th century was marked by new artistic movements and tendencies influenced by new social environment and ideas of freedom. Expressionism means a destroyed reality in order to impress viewers and appeal to their imagination and emotions. Expressionism means projection of the echo which experienced reality evokes in our soul. Whether the experience results from outside influences or from an inner vision, the true aim is always the emotional element, the mental excitation, the inner processing of the experience. In expressionists painting, the object itself is preserved, but it is freely transformed to intensify the expression.
German Expressionism began in 1920s with the “Bruecke” group. The main prosecutors were Wolfgang Degenhardt, Reiter, Die Brucke, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Max Pechstein. The uniqueness of this movement was that artists perceive the life force as divided into instinct and intellect where intuition represents the element that unites these two forms of psychic activity (Arnason, 1986).
German Expressionists regard life as a creative process. Motivated by a common desire to find their creative inspiration in life itself and to submit to the experience of life, three young students of architecture — Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt Rottluff — form the group “Die Bruecke” in Dresden in 1905. Their aims were to depict free expressions and emotions. They depict impressive scenes of streets, cafés and music halls and those profound pictures which are permeated with the poisonous breath of the world and the atmosphere of encounters and adventures. The paintings portraying the mores and morals of pre-war Berlin are the exciting script of a soul fascinated by the temptations of the metropolis, and each stroke of the brush conveys nervous tension and emotional vibration.
The unique features of German Expressionism are bright colors and unique themes such as life of elite and poor classes, luxuriant lives, interiors in the romantic mood, landscapes: the new knowledge and doctrines which revolutionized art so years ago and whose effect is felt to this day, are the source of inspiration for most recent works, richly gradated colors whose consistently mature style has replaced the impetuousness of earlier periods. They concentrated on the arsenal of their own imaginative powers for exotic masks and grotesque figures (Arnason, 1986). The softly-flowing flower and landscape watercolors introduced a new technique that was soon adopted by other artists.
They depict the world as in sharply realistic manner of representation which shows the world as an arena of infernal madness and crime, where human fate is equivalent to human guilt. Most paintings depict the violence of his big-city paintings, the inexorable harshness, bare of atmosphere, with which things and people clash in the nightmare pictures of this historical period. Such a judgment overlooks the compassion, the stubborn indignation with which the painter flings himself into the perils of human existence so that he may grasp life in all its depth (Arnason, 1986).
The main sub-movements were associated with certain art groups in Germany. They involved the Workers Council for Art and the Novembergruppe. No longer is the character of a work determined by the distant spacing of complementary colors so typical of the early period; closely joining tones spread a gentle shine over the objects (Arnason, 1986). The restrained, actually achromatic coloration consisting mostly of subdued greens and browns, is in harmony with his dreamy, idyllic themes.
A pastel-like effect is created by the addition of soft yellows, blues and pinks. Great delicacy is achieved by the application of a light coating of distemper which serves to blunt the harshness of the coarse-grained sacking on which the pictures are painted. Realist painting has here been briefly paraphrased as constituting a naturalistic projection of outward reality. Out of multi-colored particles arises a picturesque world. There is no fusing of houses, mountains, water and the ether, as in instantaneous plain-air painting; in the loose and fibrous pattern of the colors, there swings the fluttering heartbeat of the human soul which beholds the deep abyss that is life and in unceasing struggle must re-conquer anew each day its faith in the existence of a higher order of things (Chipp and Selz 1984).
Similar to expressionists, fauvists (H. Matisse, A. Derain) use strong colors and underline abstract nature of art. Thus, in contrast to expressionism they use wild brushes and stronger colors. While expressionism concentrates on delicate nature of the object, almost without substance, radiating an inner brilliance (Chipp and Selz 1984). The painter’s homage to a world that offered nature’s virile forms to the youth, made the mature man’s eye tremble with joy at the sight of its colorful splendor, and permitted the soul of the aging artist insight into the inner being of things. Fauvists use wild techniques and care little about method and style.
They liberate the essence of the object from the burden of bodily substance. Veins and nerves and the emotions and impulses intrinsic to them seem to have been painted too and brought to the surface. The seemingly accentuated and exaggerated expression serves to lay bare the sitter’s characteristic qualities and the inner tension of the moment. Both of the movements heightened the power of experience and expression in their paintings by an intensification of the basic elements of painting.
Bibliography
- Arnason, H. 1986, History of Modern Art. Prentice Hall College Div; 3rd Rev Up edition.
- Chipp, H. B., Selz, P. 1984, Theories of Modern Art University of California Press.