Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism is a German movement in literature and the visual arts which was at its height between 1910 and 1925. Its chief precursors were artists and writers who had, in various ways, departed from realistic depictions of life and the world, by expressing, in their art visionary or powerfully emotional states of mind. Among these precursors, in painting were Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and the Norwegian Edward Munch. Munch's lithograph "The Cry" is often taken to epitomize what became the expressionist mode. In literature the precursors of this movement were the French poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, the Russian Novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, the German philosopher Nietzsche and the Swedish dramatist Strindberg.

The central feature of this movement is a revolt against the artistic and literary tradition of realism, both in subject matter and style. The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision - usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision - of human life and human society. This is done by exaggerating and distorting the objective features of the outer world, and by embodying violent extremes of mood and feeling. Often, an expressionist work represents the experience of an individual standing alone and frightened in an industrial, technological and urban society which is disintegrating into chaos. Expressionists projected Utopians views of a future community.
Expressionist painters tended to use jagged lines to depict contorted objects and forms, and often used lurid colours for natural colours. Some such painters were Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka and Wassily Kandinsky.

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