Expressionism and it's Role in the History of Art

Art is one of the things that has been accompanying us over a long period of human civilization existence. Today we define art as the process or product that appeals to the sense or emotions. This term covers different modes of human expression and activity. Each century has it's particular achievements in terms of art. Thus, sculptures, cave paintings, rock paintings, and petroglyphs and so on and so forth. The history of 19th and 20th centuries art is associated with new discoveries, technological development and two world wars that influenced great the development of art of that period.

Expressionism was one the most influential artistic movements appeared during 19th and 20th centuries. Generally this term is associated with modern German art and several groups formed at that period – the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups. In the visual arts this term was used to define the works of artists that depict not objective reality but the subjective emotions that objects or events arouse. Expressionist pictures depict the images of reality, but they are distorted in form and colour. This technique was invented to make the picture more expressive, to allow the artists to express inner feelings or ideas.

The features of this painting style can be found in the works of Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor. Mystical and emotional style of painting was considered to be an extension of Romanticism. In reality the adherents of Expresionism didn't consider the style to be a movement, but it was a major stream of modern art to which a number of various painters belonged. Schiele, Kokoschka, Klee, Beckmann, Georges Rouault, Chaim Soutine, most of Picasso, Moore, Sutherland, Bacon, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Baselitz, Kiefer, Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, George Grosz and Otto Dix. The impact of the movement was really great – it evolved into the New Expressionism or contemporary Expressionism of the 1980s, and also played vital role in the development of Abstract Expressionism.

Apart from painting the movement of expressionism also appeared in another media, such as literature. In literature the style with it's bizarre distortion of reality is used as a revolt against naturalism and realism. The brightest examples of Expressionism in literature are the writings of Franz Kafka and James Joyce and also a group of early 20th-century German dramatists, including Kaiser, Toller, and Wedekind should also be mentioned. Such way of expression evolved into a free form of writing and of production in modern theater.

The pictures of well-known Expressionism painters are kept and exhibited in various Expressionism galleries and museums. The admirers of the painting style and contemporary Expressionism painting have a nice possibility to visit this galleries online to view Expressionism portraits and not only. The selection of works by contemporary artist V.Klinkov is also available online. With the help of klinkov.com website one can comfortably visit the gallery of the artist and even obtain some of his works.