Expressionism is a movement of the early twentieth century, centered in Germany, in which painters changed color, shape and line to show what they felt about a scene rather than what it looked like.
A horse could be blue, a street could tilt, a face could look like a mask. The movement grew around two groups, Die Brücke, The Bridge, founded in Dresden in 1905, and Der Blaue Reiter, The Blue Rider, first shown in Munich in 1911.
Expressionism is most often confused with Impressionism, the French movement of Claude Monet and his friends, yet the two start from opposite places. The Impressionists tried to catch what the eye receives from outside, such as the light on a river at a given hour of the day.
The Expressionists began with what they felt inside and bent the outside world until it matched. In Street, Berlin, by the German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, women in large feathered hats and men in dark coats are stretched into long, sharp shapes, and the pink pavement under them seems to tip toward the viewer.
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A label borrowed from Paris
Kirchner and his friends did not call themselves Expressionists when they began…
What You'll Discover
The two older painters the Expressionists learned from.
Why architecture students called themselves The Bridge.
What the Blue Rider's almanac put side by side.
The Nazi party member whose paintings were banned.