EXPRESSIONISM, in the visual, literary, and
performing arts, a movement or tendency that strives to express subjective
feelings and emotions rather than to depict reality or nature objectively. The
movement developed as a reaction against the academic standards that then
prevailed in Europe, particularly in French
and German art a 848t199i cademies. In expressionism the artist tries to present an
emotional experience in its most compelling form. The artist is not concerned
with reality as it appears superficially but with its inner nature and with the
emotions that are aroused by the subject. To achieve these qualities, the
subject is frequently caricatured, exaggerated, distorted, or otherwise altered
in order to emphasize the emotional experience in its most intense and
concentrated form.
Painting and Sculpture. 
Traces of expressionism are found in the art
of almost every country. Some Chinese and Japanese art emphasize the essential
qualities of the subject rather than its physical appearance. Painters and
sculptors of medieval Europe exaggerated their
work for the Romanesque and early Gothic cathedrals to intensify the spiritual
expressiveness of the subjects. Intense religious emotions expressed through
distortion are found also in the 17th-century works of the Spanish painter El
Greco and the German painter Matthias Grünewald. In the late 19th and early
20th centuries the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, the French artist Paul
Gauguin, and the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch used violent colors and
exaggerated lines to obtain intense emotional expression.
The most important expressionist group in the
20th century was the German school. The movement was originated by the painters
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel (1883-1970), and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, who
in 1905 organized a group in Dresden
called Die Brücke (see BRÜCKE, DIE),
"The Bridge." They were joined in 1906 by Emil Nolde and Max
Pechstein and in 1910 by Otto Müller (1874-1930). In 1912 Die Brücke exhibited
paintings along with a Munich
group that was called Der Blaue Reiter (see
BLAUE REITER, DER), "The Blue
Rider." Der Blaue Reiter included the German painters Franz Marc, August
Macke (1887-1914), and Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957), the Swiss Paul Klee,
and the Russian Wassily Kandinsky. This phase of expressionism in Germany
was marked by the conscious exposition of emotions and a heightened sense of
the possibilities for expressive content. Die Brücke was dissolved by and World War I halted most group activity. The Fauves
(see FAUVISM) in France, as well as the French painter
Georges Braque and the Spaniard Pablo Picasso, at a certain period of their
development, were influenced by expressionism (see MODERN ART AND
ARCHITECTURE).
A new phase of German expressionism called Die Neue Sachlichkeit ("The New
Objectivity") grew out of the disillusionment following World War I.
Founded by Otto Dix and George Grosz, it was
characterized by both a concern for social truths and an attitude of satiric
bitterness and cynicism. Expressionism meanwhile had become an international
movement, and the influence of the Germans is seen in the works of such artists
as the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the Frenchman Georges Rouault, the
Lithuanian-born French painter Chaïm Soutine, the Bulgarian-born French painter
Jules Pascin (1885-1930), and the American Max Weber.
Abstract expressionism appeared in the U.S.
following World War II. Abstract expressionist painters, such as Mark Rothko,
Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, attempted to transmit
basic emotions through violent colors, bold forms, and spontaneous methods of dripping and flinging paint-all without recognizable
subjects.
Expressionist sculpture has its roots in the
work of the 19th-century French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who expressed the inner
states of his subjects within representational forms. He strongly influenced
the work of his assistant Antoine Bourdelle, the Yugoslavian sculptor Ivan
Mestrovic, the Englishman Jacob Epstein, the German Ernst Barlach, and the
Italian Alberto Giacometti. All of their work, expressed in the human figure,
involves various forms of distortion, such as exaggeration and elongation.
