Expressionism

"Art is not about beauty, art is an expression."

(Vikram Roy)


Expressionism was an avant-garde movement that developed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. As a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism refers to art in which the representation of reality is not objective but distorted in order to express the inner feelings of the artist. Expressionist painters wanted to present the world from a subjective perspective and depict the emotional experience that objects and events arouse in them. Browse our curated list of artworks from expressionist painters including Egon Schiele, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch and learn more about the movement starting from What is Expressionism?

Expressionism Quotes

 

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

Edvard Munch

 

We call all young people together, and as young people, who carry the future in us, we want to wrest freedom for our actions and our lives from the older, comfortably established forces.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

 

I am trying to heighten my feeling for the organic rhythm in all things, trying to establish a pantheistic contact with the tremor and flow of blood in nature, in animals, in the air – trying to make it all into a picture, with new movements and with colours that reduce our old easel paintings to absurdity.

Franz Marc


 

The impressions we receive, which often appear merely chaotic, consist of three elements; the impression of the color of the object, its form, and of its combined color and form, i.e., of the object itself. At this point the individuality of the artist comes to the front and disposes, as he wills, these three elements. It is clear, therefore, that the choice of object (i.e., of one of the elements in the harmony of form) must be decided only by a corresponding vibration in the human soul...

Wassily Kandinsky
 

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself .. .It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak.

Wassily Kandinsky

 

The struggle for existence is very difficult here, but the possibilities are also greater. I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner