What is Expressionism?
Expressionism is art that shows the artist's inner feelings, not an exact copy of the world. It was strongest from about 1905 to 1925, especially in Germany and Austria.
Main features:
- Distortion: shapes are bent, stretched or broken.
- Strong, unreal colour: a face can be green, a sky red.
- Rough, visible brushwork and thick outlines.
- Emotional subjects: fear, loneliness, anger, the noise of the modern city, but also spiritual hope.
Forerunners: Vincent van Gogh (swirling strokes) and Edvard Munch, whose The Scream (1893) turns a sunset into waves of panic.
From Fauvism to figurative Expressionism
Fauvism began in Paris in 1905. A critic called the painters fauves, 'wild beasts', because of their shocking colours.
- Artists: Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck.
- Pure, bright, flat colour straight from the tube; colour chosen for feeling, not truth.
- Mostly happy subjects: landscapes, harbours, rooms, people.
- It lasted only a few years but freed colour for all later art.
German painters took this freedom further. Their art stayed figurative (you can still see people, houses, streets) but became darker and more emotional. That is figurative Expressionism.
German Expressionism: Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter
Die Brücke (The Bridge), Dresden, 1905
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff; later Emil Nolde.
- Jagged, angular shapes; clashing colours; revived the woodcut print.
- Subjects: busy city streets (Kirchner's Berlin street scenes), nudes in nature, a 'bridge' to the future.
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), Munich, 1911
- Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, August Macke, Paul Klee.
- Colour and shape carry spiritual meaning. Marc painted blue and yellow animals; Kandinsky compared colour to music and moved towards abstract art.
Austria
Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka painted nervous, twisted portraits.
After 1933 the Nazi government called this art 'degenerate' and removed it from museums. Later, in 1940s USA, Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Rothko) took the name forward.
Expressionism in film, theatre and literature
- Film: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) had painted, slanted sets and harsh shadows; Nosferatu and Metropolis followed.
- Theatre: characters as types ('the Man', 'the Mother'), short shouted lines, dream-like scenes.
- Poetry and prose: short, broken sentences, cries, repeated words, extreme moments of pain or joy. Writers show the inner shock of a character rather than calm description.
- In Ukrainian literature, Vasyl Stefanyk wrote very short, intense stories about village people in grief and poverty, and is often read as an expressionist; Olha Kobylianska and later Osyp Turianskyi also used strong inner emotion and symbol.
The common rule in every art: feeling first, realism second.
Try it
Draw your school or house twice. First, as it really looks. Second, as it feels on exam day or on the last day before holidays. Change only the colours and shapes. Then compare with the 3D slider. Which picture tells more about you?
Key formulas and definitions
- Expressionism ≈ inner feeling + distortion + strong unreal colour + rough strokes
- Forerunners: Van Gogh, Munch (The Scream, 1893)
- Fauvism (Paris, 1905): Matisse, Derain — wild, joyful colour
- Die Brücke (Dresden, 1905): Kirchner — jagged shapes, woodcuts, city stress
- Der Blaue Reiter (Munich, 1911): Kandinsky, Marc — colour = spiritual feeling → abstraction
- Beyond painting: Caligari (1920) film, expressionist theatre, poetry and short stories
Worked examples
1. A painting shows a woman with a green stripe down her face, painted in flat bright colours, in 1905 Paris. Which style?
Fauvism. Clues: unreal, bright, flat colour used for feeling; Paris; 1905 (Matisse painted such a portrait of his wife).
2. A street scene shows tall, thin people with mask-like faces, sharp angles and acid pink and green colours. Fauvism or Die Brücke?
Die Brücke (German Expressionism, e.g. Kirchner). The jagged angles and tense city mood show anxiety, while Fauvism is usually calmer and joyful.
3. Compare Impressionism and Expressionism using a sunset.
An Impressionist paints the real light and colours of the sunset at that moment. An Expressionist bends the sky into waves of red to show a feeling, like Munch's panic in The Scream.
Common mistakes
- Mixing up Impressionism and Expressionism. Impressionism records light outside; Expressionism shows feelings inside.
- Thinking Expressionist artists could not draw realistically. They distorted shapes on purpose.
- Saying Fauvism and German Expressionism are the same. Fauvism (France) is mostly joyful colour; German Expressionism is often darker and more anxious.
- Thinking Expressionism is only painting. It also shaped film, theatre, poetry, prose, music and architecture.