Expressionism art definition

Expressionism Wiki: «Expressionism is a subjective art form that distorts reality for an emotional effect.» Expressionism became a style that impacted many art forms, including painting, literature, sculpture, film, music. It gave an impetus to the development of Abstract Expressionism and contemporary Expressionism. In general this term applied mainly to 20th century works.

Features of Expressionism can be found in different works of quite various artists – the painters M. Beckmann, E. Heckel, E. Nolde, K. Schmidt-Rottluff, and W. Kandinsky, E. L. Kirchner, O. Kokoschka, Paula Modersohn-Becker, the members of groups Der blaue Reiter and Die Brücke, sculptor E. Barlach, musician A. Schönberg, film-maker R. Wiene. Expressionism reacted against naturalism in literature as well – in poetry and in drama there the style was exclamatory and elliptical with frequent omission of verbs and articles. The principal dramatists of Expressionism are E. Barlach, G. Sack, C. Sternheim, and F. von Unruh, B. Brecht (in his early work), R. Goering, W. Hasenclever, H. Johst, G. Kaiser.

The style of expressionism experienced it's height in the 1914-18 War, two years later it declined to resurrect in form of Abstract Expressionism, contemporary Expressionism, American Expressionism later on. The last one and particularly the Boston figurative Expressionism (Karl Zerbe, Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, David Aronson, Philip Guston) became an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War. Figurative Expressionism, in it's turn, later influenced great number of artists and movements: New York Figurative Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s. Neo-expressionism also united a lot of artists from different countries.

To the list of the artists of Expressionism such names also belong: Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman, John Perceval, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester (Australia), Egon Schiele (Austria), Constant Permeke, Gustave De Smet, Frits Van den Berghe, James Ensor, Floris Jespers and Albert Droesbeke (Belgium), and also a number of artists from Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Mexico, Iceland and other countries.

The features of Expressionism are arbitrary colors and jarring compositions used to capture emotions and subjective interpretations. The idea to express one's feeling in this way is shared by a number of contemporary painters whose paintings we can view at the local galleries as well as online. Klinkov.com is the website designed to provide you with a possibility to visit contemporary artist painting collection.