§h<»«.
'V.
NORBERT WOLF
TASCHEN
f
The Author Norbert Wolf is
of
(b.
1949), graduated
in ai
Regensburg and Munich. He took
|
medievc
his doctora'
Munich on the carved 1 4th-century retabel". Subsequently held Marburg, Frankfurt a.M., Leipzig, Diisseldorf and Nuremberg-
"habilitation" in
v
University of Innsbruck, and an author of scholarly works. Works already published by TASCH Painting of the Romantic Era, 1999; Diego Velazquez, 1999; Codices illustres. The world's most
famous illuminated manuscripts, 2001 2003; Caspar David
Friedrich,
(in
collaboration with Ingo
F.
Walther); Ernst
Ludwig
Kirchner,
2003.
The Editor Uta Grosenick publications for
Riemschneider);
(b.
1
960)
TASCHEN:
Women
is
a freelance editor based
in
Art at the Turn of the Millennium,
Artists,
2001;
ART NOW,
Cologne. She has edited the following
1999
(in
collaboration with Burkhard
200.
Schneider); Buttner, 2003.
"cubism and Futurism were minced up to create mock hare, that metaphysical German meatloaf known as Expressionism." El Lissitzky
& Hans
AUGUST MACKE
Arp,
1
925
DC A
BlA(/eR€f76fc
ftLr>p'-y
Expressionism NORBERTWOLF UTAGROSENICK(ED.)
TASCHEN KOLN LONDON LOS ANGELES MADRID PARIS TOKYO
contents
Metaphysical German Meatloaf 26 28
30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58
60 62 64
66 68 70
72 74
76 78
80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94
— The Refugee — MAX BECKMANN Scene from the "Earthquake Messina" MAX BECKMANN — The Night HEINRICH CAMPENDONK — Bucolic Landscape LOVIS CORINTH — The Red Christ OTTO DIX — a Soldier OTTO DIX — Prager LYON EL FEININGER — Market Church Halle GEORGE GROSZ — Dedicated to Oskar Panizza ERICH HECKEL — Pechstein Asleep ERICH HECKEL — Glass Day ALEXEI VON AWLENSKY — of the Dancer Alexander Sacharoff WASSILY KANDINSKY — Ludwig's Church Munich WASSILY KANDINSKY — Improvisation Klamm ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER — (Marcella) — ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER Potsdamer PAUL KLEE — Foehn Wind Marc's Garden, 1915, 102 OSKAR KOKOSCHKA — of Herwarth Walden OSKAR KOKOSCHKA — The Tempest WILHELM LEHMBRUCK — The Fallen Man AUGUST MACKE — Lady a Green Jacket FRANZ MARC — The Small Yellow Horses FRANZ MARC — Tyrol LUDWIG MEIDNER — Apocalyptic City with Camelia Sprig PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER — OTTO MUELLER — Gypsies with Sunflowers GABRIELE MUNTER — Schoolhouse, Murnau EMIL NOLDE — The Legend of Maria Aegyptiaca EMIL NOLDE — Tropical Sun MAX PECHSTEIN — Palau Triptych CHRISTIAN ROHLFS — Acrobats EGON SCHIELE — Standing Male Nude of Rosa Schapire KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF — ARNOLD SCHOENBERG — The Red Gaze MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN — ERNST BARLACH
in
Self-portrait as
Strasse
in
Portrait
J
in
St.
Artiste
Platz
in
Portrait
in
Self-portrait
St.
(Self-portrait)
Portrait
Self-portrait
Metaphysical German Meatloaf
MATTHIAS GRUNEWALD
1)
The
Crucifixion
from the Isenheim Altarpiece
between 1512 and 269 x 307 cm
1516, Oil
on wood
panel,
Colmar, Musee d'Unterlinden
WASSILY KANDINSKY
2)
Improvisation 9 1910, Oil
on canvas, 110 x 110 cm
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
"What does my shadow matter? Let run
..."
it
This proud credo
Nietzsche (1844-1900),
it
was penned
in
-
shall out-
1890s by
Friedrich
run after me!
in
the
I
Thus Spake Zarathustra. Twenty years
Expressionist artists took the philosopher they idolized at his
later,
word and outran the shadow
of
academic
bourgeois taste, and
rules,
the backward-looking costume plays of Historical Revival
The words "expressionism" and up
the art literature around 1911,
in
avant-garde sirer
"expressionist"
art in
Europe around the
(1871-1926), the Berlin
initially
1944),
in
cropped
as blanket terms for
turn of the century. Paul
Cas-
Munch (1863-
order to distinguish the Norwegian's work from Impression-
The same word was used by art historian Wilhelm Worringer 88 - 965), in the journal Sturm for August 9 to characterize
ism. (
1
1
1
1
the art of Paul
Secession exhibition of
1
9
1
1
,
der this rubric, from Pablo Picasso
(
1
vanguard.
In
,
In
the catalogue to the
88 - 973) 1
1
of
French Cubists and the Blauer Reiter
subsumed under
German Autumn
this term. Yet five
fell
un-
and thus
limited this stylistic
this
regard
was Paul
become
the
rule.
A
breakthrough
(1880-1958) 1914 book, DerExpres-
Fechter's
191
1,
and a year
staged,
in
Sohn (The
later,
the
first
term became current around
"German Expressionist drama" was
the shape of Walter Hasenclever's
(1890-1940)
play
By the outbreak
of the First
World War,
in
other words,
Expressionism had become almost synonymous with the German contribution to current international developments ture. This national restriction
ous impulses that German
in art
and
art
like
the Russian El Lissitzky of Alsace
many
received from abroad. Although
on the German scene denied such influences, cosmopolitan
(1887-1966)
litera-
took place despite the great and obvi-
artists
(1890-1941) and Hans (Jean) Arp
saw them very
clearly,
while scoffing that
1918, Expres-
Isms, 1925, the two authors declared, "Cubism and Futurism
Point
in Art),
Munich were
years previously, at the
artists
minced up
known as
had only half-digested them.
to create
mock
In
their
hare, that metaphysical
book The Art were
German meatloaf
Expressionism."
Nevertheless, the myth had long since been born; or perhaps
"First
Salon" of 1913, Walden had introduced the Blauer
Der
Son).
German
in
in
sionismus, which focused on the art of Die Brucke and Der Blaue
young French
to the
Kunstwende (Expressionism, the Turning
Italian Futurists,
1905
1
Cubist and Fauvist artists
Herwarth Walden's (1879-1941) book
sionismus, die
all
1
Cezanne (1839-1906), Vincent van Gogh (1853-
1890) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Berlin
This tendency would soon
reputedly applied the term to
art dealer,
the emotion-charged paintings and prints of Edvard
Expressionists",
Reiter. In the field of literature, too, the
art.
first
"German
Reiter group as
category to the German-speaking countries.
rather,
a myth that had existed since the Sturm und Drang of the late
— Russo-Japanese War ends with Japan's victory 1905 — Robert Koch receives Nobel Prize Medicine for his tuberculosis research 1906 — France, the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus, accused of treason, rehabilitated in
In
is
eighteenth century had received tresh of
Germans
Now, about
were seen as
1
905, German
fuel:
the supposed prerogative
extreme emotional states
for the expression of
artists
their Faustian gifts into
appeared
modern
declared Kasimir Edschmid; that tive rather
in art.
to be bringing what
art with revolutionary
of their
since
it
was supposedly an outpouring from
Expressionism could be explained
demonic man per se
So
1958),
in
like this:
how
'German man
demonism
of
is
Be-
(1881-
- charged
Heilige Reich der in
1
Pechstein.
In
a
Deutschen (The Holy Empire
925. Back
by such mental "buffeting"
the
in
1
of the
920, the creative urge spurred
was evoked by the former Brucke
similarly agitated staccato,
painter
Pechstein exclaimed:
"Work! Intoxication! Brain racking! Chewing, eating, gorging, rooting up! birth
pangs! Jabbing of the brush, preferably right through
the canvas. Trampling on paint tubes
." .
.
Shock, provocation, a revolt of
the young against the hidebound establishment - these, not only Pechstein believed,
A
were the
driving force behind Expressionism.
feverish restlessness, an
to mysticism
destine
1906
it
- elements
for the
new
style.
— San Francisco
killing
of the
about 80,000 of
"German psyche"
that
tendency
seemed
to pre-
"The Expressionist does not look, he sees,"
hit
by a devastating earthquake
its
120,000 inhabitants.
In Siberia,
their
view of the world out
effect "created" reality by dint of their
in
vi-
its
tele-
exclamations and explosive, brief phrases not only
meaning
is
of words,
deceptive.
with symbols and metaphors
and obscure, comprehensible only acter of Expressionist diction
the movement. But told
some
In reality,
it
was
meta-
exalted, harsh char-
As August Macke
means
in
already
of expression they used
what they wanted
What would be gained by
The
fact an elixir for those involved
also invited criticism.
"too big for
inflated the
- remained purposely dark
to initiates. in
of his fellow painters, the
were perhaps
it
generated arbitrary verbal sequences, and
to say".
taking Expressionism at
its
word and
raising the expression of emotions to the main criterion of good art?
Wouldn't this be tantamount to exalting a mania into a style? What implied by describing the effect of art metaphorically, as a slap
emphasis on the painting process
rather than on the creation of serene, self-contained form, a
its
ideas. Yet this impression
stated the idealist philosopher Leopold Ziegler
is
who
blasted traditional syntax but apparently conveyed clear and lucid
physical
Das
Rapturous
style,
to other
this
volition,
Expressionist artists were forma-
Judging by such examples, Expressionist diction with
gram
German appears
Germans), published
Max
language
Driven, buffeted by such a
...
coming and never Being peoples."
in
the national psyche,
own
is,
who shaped
sionary powers.
verve, finally establishing a counterweight to the French avant-garde.
And
than imitative minds
public's face,
an attack on the audience?
gave a terse
definition of Expressionist
In
art,
is
not so apt as
1908
it
might seem.
is
the
1917 Herwarth Walden saying that
"impression from outside" but an "expression from this definition
in
it
was
inside."
When we
not an
Yet again,
think about
it,
it
— Messina destroyed by an earthquake,
a giant meteorite causes widespread devastation
3)
FRANZ MARC
Forms on canvas, 91 x 131.5 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst Fighting
1914, Oil
4)
GEORGE GROSZ
The
Street
on canvas, 45.5 x 35.5 cm
1915, Oil
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
applies just as well to countless past works of
art,
from the figures of
Michelangelo to the prints of Albrecht Durer, or from the ings of Matthias El
Greco
sionists. ly
Grunewald
1475/80-1528;
(c.
1541-1614), two
(c.
What
justifies
twentieth-century
us
in
characterizing the expressiveness of ear-
"ism",
not simply as a neurotic ad-
an established style?
Art historians have always had their difficulties
One need
Expressionism as a
style.
Kirchner, Kandinsky,
Kokoschka and Dix
no formal
common
ground. This
dency", a manifestation of a just as
is
only to
force field of
modern
art,
peak - suggesting
feeling for
This art
life.
And as
1909
— The
them up
that they
to date,
in
Blaue
Reiter,
artists'
groups that appeared
in
Ger-
the years prior to the First World War, Die Brucke and Der
attempted nothing less than to
to a
and without
directly
In
"new generation
anyone who was capable
realize the ideal of a fu-
their manifesto, the Brucke artists
of both creators
and lovers of
of expressing "what urges
adulteration", as
progressive religion of
Between
developing them to a
were not able
to outrun that
them
welcome adepts
art",
to
to create,
of a
new and
art.
Distortion
and Abstraction
like
a
shadow over them. His
The revolutionary philosopher presented a prime
six-day bicycle race
in
The dogmas a good and true
of this
life,
art, this
Germany takes place 191
1
in
Berlin
immersion
the characters
art,
who
acted as
if
1910
— German gunboat "Panther"
is
in
in
its
contradictions.
subjectivity;
and submission
individual
flected
in
religion of art with
were fraught with
hand stood means of extreme
all.
Nietzsche himself loomed
first
The two most important
many
frequently
suggestive forms within the
books were enthusiastically consumed by the younger generation, es-
"On Psychoanalysis"
of
anxiety as reflect nostalgia for
new and
"shadow" invoked by Nietzsche after
pecially Zarathustra.
ples.
appealed
prefer
was the earthquake
also presented countless problems to Nietzsche's enthusiastic disci-
ture existential world order.
now
"...
generation." Yet such an overweening "superego"
to
art historians
Nietzsche
they just as frequently thought through old
familiar formulas, bringing
In fact,
my
of
why many
much be suffused by urban
the epoch for
later recall,
see that they have next
young generation's
as the Expressionists probed
radical
accepting
narrow-mindedess, materialist thinking. As the poet Gottfried Benn
(1886-1956) would
compare the paintings
a past Golden Age, a paradisal state of innocence.
and
in
Expressionism less as a style than as a "direction" or "ten-
to describe
can
altar paint-
the work of
1) to
much admired by the Expres-
artists
German modernism
venture but as a serious
fig.
of self-liberation from authoritarian constrictions, bourgeois
example
on the
to the
projection of
On
the one
other, a desire for
cosmos. This was
re-
Expressionist literature, stage plays and
they were marionettes of universal forces. The
— Sigmund Freud publishes his pioneering essay,
sent to Agadir, triggering the second Morocco Crisis
5)
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
Winter 1919,
Moon Night
Colour woodcut, 31 x 29.5
Basel, Offentliche
cm
Kunstsammlung,
Kupferstichkabinett
6)
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
Standing Female Figure 1912,
Wood
(alder),
98 x 23 x 18
Museen zu
Berlin, Staatliche
cm
Berlin -
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie
spontaneous, agitated expression aimed at
Werner Hofmann has
both cases led to what
in
called "elementary gestures of sensation
and
instinct".
ual
passive depictions of nature a
la
Impressionism and tap
individ-
emotional powers, by employing brash bright colours and "brutally"
reduced forms. The laws of perspective, faithfulness to anatomy, natural
appearances and colours counted
for
and exaggeration became an equivalent world transparent to the psyche. vealing
title
Kandinsky gave
1910 and published che,
in
On
to the
the Spiritual
1911. The development of an
what Kandinsky termed
(fig.
"Nordic man", that regard,
1908
was
2)
Art
in
opened
"spiritualization",
and the Blauer Reiter
who yearned
in in
in
the psy-
to painting the
art history for
Munich
(fig.
which
3) stood.
for insight into the spiritual and,
related to "the Oriental", explained Worringer
dissertation Abstraction
re-
finished
art of
and Empathy
"feels
a
veil
himself and nature," and therefore strives for an abstract ingly,
was the
now-famous book he
art.
in
in
his
between Accord-
abstraction and expression would enter a "Faustian" marriage.
Not only with regard sciousness of
artists,
to the ecstatically
heightened self-con-
but also with regard to their symbolic inter-
pretation of the world, their search for metaphysical foundations or
1911
— Marie Sklodovska-Curie awarded Nobel Prize
becomes
first
man
to reach the
South Pole
in
Kandinsky, for instance,
"Romanticism"
term
was
of
many an
greatly pleased
connection
in
idea that originated
them were
with
quite
when a his
aware critic
work.
in
of this.
used the
Moreover,
Expressionism shared the penchant of one branch of Romanticism for things
A
dark and aberrant.
case
in
point
Alfred Kubin
is
(1877-1959), an eccentric
artist distantly
associated with the movement. Born
Litomerice)
Bohemia, the young Kubin enjoyed torturing small
mals,
in
watched
flayers
natural disasters father. In Reiter.
and butchers
- probably an
at work,
in
Leitmeritz
(now ani-
and was fascinated by
instinctual reaction to
an overly
1911 Kubin was among the founding members
of
strict
Der Blaue
Years previously he had illustrated ghost and horror tales by
the likes of Dostoyevsky, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, and
Oskar Panizza,
primarily
watercolours or
oils.
in
pen-and-ink drawings, but occasionally
magorical and nightmarish realm that
seemed
to spring straight
from
the "black" or "gothic" Romanticism of the early nineteenth century.
twelve
weeks
of the year
1
In
907, he wrote the novel The Other Side, a
paraphrase of the Apocalypse spirits
in
Kubin's spidery, scratchy stroke invoked a phantas-
the reader into a dream
in
city
highly expressive diction. Kubin
by the
name
of Pearl,
in
far distant
for her discovery of radium and polonium 1911 — Roald Amundsen — Passenger ship "Titanic" sinks after colliding with an iceberg
Chemistry
1912
for a rebirth of unadulterated cre-
the Expressionists developed
German Romanticism. Some
for rendering the material
realm of abstract symbolism, a turning point both Kandinsky
or nothing; distortion
little
hoped
history from which they ativity,
At the onset of the development, the crucial thing was to over-
come
cosmological orders, Utopian designs and elementary realms beyond
Asia.
As the
ot a
meaning
inhabitants search tor a hidden
lessness ot their existence, the devil appears
"manager" and takes over the helm. The
begins
its
in
with folk
city
inexorable demise.
ly
Overexcitedness was characteristic not of
many
but of
all
of Expressionist activity. Recall the agitated figures
art,
in
reli-
children's drawings
- advanced
ill
1913 on an
fields
Nolde's
in
in
the art of the
world's indigenous peoples. Masks, fetishes, ancestor figures
the guise
and the
plot turns
sumably unspoiled principles of design, embodied
the sense-
in
among them
to the centre of artists'
expedition to
the Palau Islands
number
in
New
- along
and the picturemaking of the mentalconcerns. Nolde set off
in
Guinea. Pechstein considered settling
1914. Aesthetically, such interests resulted not
wood
gious compositions, the apocalyptic landscapes of Schmidt-Rottluff,
least
Heckel, and especially Meidner, or the masklike, distorted big-city
sculptures were probably inspired by Carl Einstein's book Negerplas-
faces of Grosz
(fig.
4) or Dix. Overexcitedness also
marks the highly
contrasting planes or nervous, angular forms and hatching prints, (fig.
many
5).
An
of which are
among
the "beautiful and
ous decoration
true",
for
hand with an urge
came
artists' part to liberate art
where
home and
it
tik
had degenerated
ist
to the fore. This
for the "elemental", everything exotic
and
of Expressionist carvings. Schmidt-Rottluff's
Museums
inspiration, as did the
in
1915. Kirchner,
too, created similar
became sources
of ethnology
performances of "exotic
magazine photographs
of
of Expression-
artistes" at the circus
"Negro combos".
lips
and pointed
chins,
an emphasis on the roughhewn that was com-
Yet such excessive tendencies were always paralleled by more
primitive,
domesticated approaches. Kirchner's oeuvre can stand
"naturalness" and the lust for
this regard.
As
dios with African sire for
as a
1912
10
of Expressionist creation.
1905, French avant-garde
early as
terest themselves
in
artists
had begun
supposed primitiveness served two purposes
way
to revolt against the bourgeoisie,
Pacific. This
for
his art
de-
was
1
920, the
many
in
favour of
unearthed, and the original
is
underpinning of
began
to
suppress
a more considered approach. The
sulting decorative, flat structuring
is
intellectual
increasingly important to him; he in
for
not the sheer emotionalist for which he his
re-
and serene, monumental composi-
tions belied the cliche of the Faustian
of pre-
— Rudolf Steiner establishes the "Anthroposophical Society" 1912 — Portrait bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti
became
the impulsive factor
bohemians:
and as a source
Kirchner
generally taken. Especially after
to in-
ethnological collections and adorned their stu-
masks and statues from the South
full
plemented by exaggerated gestures and poses.
in
which along with free sexuality were celebrated as an embodiment of life
Primitivistic
traits entered depictions of faces especially, with angular noses,
into pretty, innocu-
went hand
(fig. 6).
or cabarets, or
from the ghetto of
fireside. This aesthetic
a
(Negro Sculpture), published
works
the
the high points of Expressionist art
aesthetic of the ugly and brutal
represented an appeal on
in
in
German modernism favoured by
brought to Berlin
7)
CONRAD FELIXMULLER
Worker on the Way Home 1921, Oil on canvas, 95 x 95 cm Berlin, private collection
8)
MAX PECHSTEIN
Open
air (Bathers in
9)
The
Moritzburg)
on canvas, 70 x 79.5 cm Duisburg, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum
who
later authors,
reer and excluded
it
Village Idiot
cm
1920/22, Oil on canvas, 92 x 65
1910, Oil
many
CHAIM SOUTINE
Avignon, Musee Calvet
accordingly disregarded this phase ot his ca-
trom the panorama ot Expressionism.
Prior to the First
World War, Expressionist experiments
and colour reflected above moods. Only
later did
and
they turn clearly to social issues, depicting
vic-
tims of war, pillorying social injustice or political repression.
purging the world
began
artists
to
advance concrete arguments
the eve of World
War
I
in
retrospect: "War simply had to bring us
grandeur, strength, dignity. To us
it
seemed a masculine
shootout on blossoming, blood-bedewed meadows.
was there to
some
in
the world
..."
Only a few
patriotic choir.
The
and Corinth,
in
contrast,
No
finer
death
added
immune
their voices to the
War euphoria swept through Europe from end
Futurists had long since declared
and
to this
war
to
to end.
be "the only
hygiene for the world". Marc expected the war to bring a worldwide
Beckmann and
willing to
go beyond the
artist's role
and engage
in
(fig. 7),
actual party
politics.
The Expressionist groupings, whether more
a merry
including Pechstein
artists,
extent Grosz, Meidner and Felixmuller, were
fascination. Barlach
act,
were
Now
for improving the
world. However, only a few, apart from Grosz and Felixmuller
1926, Ernst Junger (1895-1989) described the mood on
In
form
in
individual artists' mental states
all
loosely knit,
all
envisaged a community of
took of Romantic
ideals. Naturally
living
known through group
and publications. The Brucke painters
everything, from studios
more
they pursued more practical ends
as well, especially that of making their work hibitions
closely or
and working that par-
and models
in
particular
ex-
shared
to painting materials, partly out of
a lack of funds but mainly because fraternal cooperation meant a great deal to them. Living and working
in
town was interrupted
in
the
volunteered for service; Schmidt-Rottluff looked forward to the
summer months by extended country vacations, where they painted from life, swam in the nude, and generally enjoyed themselves with
chance
their
models and
ture
(fig.
catharsis and a spiritual purging of humankind.
to "create
something as powerful as could
exalted visions rapidly gave fields,
way
to
trauma
rank trenches, and overflowing
Flanders.
Many young
artists
in
be".
Dix
Yet such
view of the shell-holed
field hospitals of
France and
- Marc, Macke, Morgner - were never
girlfriends. This imitation of
an innocent state of na-
8) reflected artists' yearning for that unity of art and
life
which had been among the demands of the avant-garde ever since the 1890s. This, too,
was an attempt
to purify
a materialistic world by
turning back to the utopia of an earthly paradise.
to return.
1913 1913
—
In
— Premiere of Stravinsky's ballet Le sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring)
the U.S., Ford introduces the assembly line into automobile production
in
Paris provokes a scandal
EDVARD MUNCH
10)
The Scream 1893, Oil
on
canvas, 91
x 74 cm
Oslo, Nasjonalgallenet
11)
GEORGES ROUAULT Eve
Fallen
1905, Watercolour and pastel, 25.5 x 21 Paris,
12)
Musee
d'Art
Moderne de
la Ville
cm
de
Paris
JAMES ENSOR
Still-life in
the Studio
canvas, 83 x 113 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne -
1889, Oil
on
Staatsgalerie
The Topography of Expressionism
Macke's contact with Der Blaue
Bonn and through
Many attempts have been made sionism into clear domains.
sionists
is
in
The
problematical.
in
Nolde had
Alsen, and Rohlfs
on Dresden
in
considered an
knew each
consider
briefly
met Paula Modersohn-Becker in
Soest
Soest and Hagen. Nolde,
affiliate of this
in
1907. Otherwise
in
in
in
view of
island
of
his brief,
Die Brucke, can properly be
tendency. Rohlfs, on the other hand,
is
the literature as a representative of "Rhenish Expres-
sionism". In
purely geographical terms, the Rhineland
Folkwang,
in
founded
in
Hagen
in
(1874-1921), became a key centre
August Macke was active in
1912,
in
fact played an
the chorus of Expressionist voices. The
in
1902 by
Karl
of the art
scene
Ernst
member
for the
is
It
was
not
permissible only
is it
some
specifically
third
was no commonly
who
Surrealist
in
part of
when we remain to
Rhenish brand of Exat the
where the key Expressionist
University,
title
Macke
tried to
marshal an
of "Rhenish Expressionists",
centre alongside Berlin and Munich. Yet there
held concept to weld together the sixteen candi-
apart from
Max
Macke as
1913, on the occasion of a show
group of friends under the
and establish a
dates,
Macke's attitude
would be even more imprecise
ideologist Wilhelm Worringer taught, that existing
Ernst
(
1
Macke and Campendonk included the 89 - 976). The latter's characterization 1
1
a newspaper review
was
indicative.
The show
future of the
revealed,
Ernst wrote, "how a series of powers are at work within the great
common
who have no outward 'direction' of thrust,
similarity to
one an-
namely the intention
to
give expression to things of the psyche (Seelisches) through form alone."
Cologne "Sonder-
inaugurated
in
until
other but only a
at that period.
and
Cohen bookshop near Bonn
Osthaus
— Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie,
Canal, under construction by the U.S. since 1906,
1
pressionism.
leader
stream of Expressionism
bund" exhibition, Yet the literature tends to put more weight on
1914
Macke a
Museum
the Rhineland on several occasions, serv-
for instance, as a jury
is difficult,
his taste. Classifying
of his outsider's role. Yet
Bonn show
important part
ing
Der Blaue Reiter
painters concerned barely
Worpswede, Nolde mostly on the
in
cism they displayed was not to
aware
one-and-a-half year membership
in
to focus
the north lived at great distances from one another -
Modersohn-Becker
described
is
which he maintained from
Reiter,
his friendship with Marc. Actually,
Munich group was always ambivalent, and the romantic mysti-
of Expres-
1900 and encountered Rohlfs
the artists
it
to the
German group
attempt to define a Northern
other, although
Paris
As convincing as
of Expres-
Brucke) and Southern Germany or Munich (Der Blaue
or Berlin (Die Reiter), the
map
to divide the
Moderner Kunst
The Austrian and Viennese 1
900 in
art
scene was dominated around
by Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau. Gustav Klimt
862-1 91
8)
was
1914 — The Panama — Einstein develops his General Theory of Relativity
Sarajevo triggers World War
1915
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the admired model for Kokoschka and Schiele, pressionists idiom developed by colour,
way
whose personal Ex-
of Klimt's daring form and
which the more conservative wing of the Viennese Secession
found subversive. Klimt also communicated an existential involvement with subjects such as sexuality, illness ists.
The influence
of
and death
to the Expression-
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis on the
environment of the day lent Austrian Expressionism Countless components
made
the
map
its
artistic
special note.
lone wolves. For Kandinsky, Feininger, Dix and others, the style reprebrief
phase. Nor should
we
forget that expres-
sionists tendencies appeared beyond the borders of the
speaking world as
Permeke Berghe
(
(1 1
886-1
well. In
German-
Belgium, for example, the work of Constant
952), Gustaaf de
883- 939) and 1
Smet
Albert Servaes
877-1 943),
(1 (
1
ists,
Frits
883- 966) 1
is
van den
spoken
of
Two further painters also deserve mention. One was Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), a Lithuanian Jew who worked from 1916 onwards in Paris. His friends, including Amedeo (1884-1920), had connections with the
Sturm and were
familiar with publications
Soon Soutine began imity with the
Modigliani's.
1916
it
is
Der
on German Expressionism.
prewar work of Ludwig Meidner
However,
Berlin journal
pursue aims that brought him
to
above
(fig.
into close prox9),
a friend of
uncertain whether Soutine ever
by the Abstract Expression-
slaughtered cattle
who admired Sou-
- Soutine was long
have influenced Oskar Kokoschka. This
is
believed to
incorrect for chronological
reasons alone, and was always vehemently denied by Kokoschka himself.
Nor can the occasional reversal
The second
artist
Georges Rouault
(1871-1958), has likewise frequently been compared in
his
Dresden
period.
The French
tremely heavy contours and
be proven.
of this relationship
question, the Fauvist
in
to
Kokoschka
artist outlined his figures with
ex-
the spaces with strong colours.
In
1905, he began concentrating increasingly on religious subjects.
In
filled
these respects Rouault's work
French
paintings of Nolde or Citing
names
Expressionism.
closer than that of any other
In
1
11), for
(fig.
instance the
Beckmann.
like
tempts have been made
ed an exhibition
came
German Expressionism
artist to
928,
titled
Soutine, Rouault and others, occasional atto define in fact,
something
Galerie Alice
in
the nature of French
Manteau
in
Paris
Soutine, Modigliani, Vlaminck (1876-1958), Maurice Utrillo 1
955) and Marc Chagall
ise that
they
all
(
1
887- 985) were shown under 1
reflected a heightened
—
the dancer Mata Hari
1917
mount-
"L'Expressionisme Frangais", at which works by
and employed subjective means
In Paris,
France and the United States,
In
later, incidentally,
saw Ger-
— Heavy fighting at Verdun 1917
all
the original.
in
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997),
tine's depictions of
as Flemish Expressionism.
Modigliani
Expressionist art
of Expressionism into a
many-coloured and complex tapestry. Accents were set by a series of
sented no more than a
man
where he was lauded -
awareness
of depiction
(1883-
the prem-
of an inner world
marked by energetic
— The U.S. declares war on Germany is
shot as a
German spy
13
VINCENT VAN
13)
The Church
GOGH
of Auvers
1890, Oil on canvas, 94 x 74
cm
Musee d'Orsay
Paris,
PAUL GAUGUIN
14)
Contes barbares (Exotic Legends)
mmim
cm
1902, Oil on canvas, 131.5 x 90.5
Museum Folkwang
Essen,
gestures, distortions of form, and orgies of colour
words, that had long been canonized
in
-
criteria, in
Germany as those
other
of Expres-
journals and collectors.
The Belgian James Ensor (1860-1949) and
who was
the Norwegian Edvard Munch,
long active
in
Germany,
like-
wise caused a sensation there.
sionism.
The Expressionists
and elsewhere welcomed any
Berlin
in
brand of painting that was based without reserve on subjective expe-
From the Reservoir
of the
European Avant-Garde
rience and
its
What was the
art
scene
like
stage? As a point of departure,
Brucke moved
in artistic
when
German
matters as well as
came on
the Expressionists
us take prewar Berlin, where Die
after their first years in Dresden. Wilhelm
Prussia and Kaiser of the
tone
let
Empire, political,
II,
King of
duty-bound to set the
felt
despite the fact that pro-
tion of representing or illustrating (fig.
ern
And
1
2),
who
mass
this held
especially.
torments of
loaded pomposities of Anton von Werner (1843-1915), his court artist.
Anything that diverged from painstakingly rendered
costume scenes
or innocuous salon paintings
category of "gutter Kollwitz
art",
was
from the socially committed prints of Kathe of
Max
Lieber-
to the absolutely crazy Expressionists and, of
course, every foreign so-called "avant-garde". Most of the revolutionary advances
in
modern
had been presented
1917 in
art
to the Berlin public by
— Lenin and Trotsky
Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm
14
had long since taken place
II
is
lay the
audacious
groundwork
forced to abdicate
in
Paris,
and
art dealers,
for the
appearances. This held for Ensor
revealed the depravity behind the masquerade of
mod-
even more
for the symbolistic art of
Munch
with
its
ex-
Munch's famous Scream of life
into
a
child's
1
893
(fig.
1
0) projected
all
the
face distorted into an emblematic, unfor-
gettable grimace. Munch's inscription
in
the fiery red sky
is
indicative:
"Could only have been painted by a madman."
And again and
relegated to the
(1867-1945) and the earthy Impressionism
mann (1847-1935)
historical
conventional func-
pressive graphic abbreviations, which affected the art of Die Brucke
gressive minds thought he had the taste of "a cook or baker's boy".
on the throne enjoyed were the pedantic, over-
art's
society and by so doing deeply impressed Nolde, for one.
What
this dilettante
forms and colour
radical translation into expressive
arrangements, and that accordingly overcame
again,
it
was two
"fathers of
cast their spell over the Expressionists: Vincent van
Paul
Gauguin (1848-1903;
fig.
14),
Schneede has described as "The 'rough spectives, flatness, deformations itions
...
The 'rough
coarser canvas,
Communist Revolution
in
in
Russia
image':
made
...
1918
(fig.
1
3) and
who shared what Uwe image',
whose
run counter to
of coarsely
rapidly applied,
modernism" who
Gogh
all
M.
distorted per-
well-worn trad-
rubbed pigment, on ever
broad brushstrokes, with parts of
— Following the November Revolution
15)
PIERRE BONNARD
At the Circus c.
1900, Oil on canvas, 54 x 65
cm
Paris, private collection
the canvas
left
uncovered
painting process
The
first
.
.
revealing the sequential character of the
.,
van
Gogh
exhibition
cannot be overstated, was mounted Brucke, at Galerie Arnold
touched
off a notorious
in
in in
1
Germany, whose significance
movement
905, the founding year of Die
be
Dresden. However, the same van Gogh
scandal
Gogh work was acquired by
in
Germany.
191
In
domination" of
renowned
artists,
German
strangely
1,
when a van
the Kunsthalle Bremen, the mediocre
painter Carl Vinnen launched a petition protesting at "alien
Andre Derain (1880-1954), they were joined the following year by
Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Raoul Duty (1877-1953). A
..."
art.
The
petition
including
what he termed
was signed by
Kathe
Kollwitz.
several
Marc and
Kandinsky immediately organized a counterprotest, which was sup-
flat
briefly
that
planes
in
to essentials.
description,
power
was as
influential
described as painting
as
it
was
Fauvism might
short-lived,
colours deployed
rich in
in
luminous,
which figures and objects were abstracted and reduced
The colours were released from the task
and were therefore capable
of naturalistic
of developing an
enormous
of expression. At times, tense lines held the colour areas
together, yet often these strokes took a loose, approximate course,
not always forming definite contours and serving
more
to
accentuate
areas than to isolate them. The fascination exerted on the Fauves by
museum directors, art historians and artists and appeared in sub-Saharan African and Oceanic art strengthened their resolve to the summer of that year with Piper, Munich, under the title Im engender decorative effects by means as simple as possible. necessary, they distorted forms or rhythm of a composition made Kampf urn die Kunst (The Struggle for Art).
ported by print
by the
If
it
The paintings,
thesis of
exotic,
if
Europeanized, mythical aura of Gauguin's Tahitian
on the other hand, struck the Expressionists as a perfect synlife
and
art.
They admired Gauguin's emotionally moving
fig-
ures and were inspired by his generous, sweeping planes and his ten-
dency
to the daringly decorative
kind which In
critic
were
later
adopted
-
in
1905, a band of young
called
them
(1869-1954;
"les Fauves", or
fig.
16),
stylistic
means,
in
other words, of the
painting
artists
shocked Paris audiences. One
"The Savages", Led by Henri Matisse
—
In
the latter were absorbed into Hitler's
became
ation, in
relationships.
spatial
widely
Die Brucke and the
known
Neue
in
Around
Kunstlervereinigung, or
Munich. Fauvism
The representatives
became an of
1908, Fauvist
Germany, through the mediation of
New
Artists Associ-
inexhaustible reservoir, from
which other Expressionists soon began to draw as
Gauguin's wake by the Nabis.
Georges Rouault, Maurice de Vlaminck and 1918
employed "unnatural"
well.
Der Blaue Reiter and Rhenish Expres-
sionism tapped a different source: the Orphism of Robert Delaunay
(1885-1941). The yet
highly respected
was disturbed by the
studio
Delaunay began with Cubism,
still-life
motifs on which Cubist
Germany, the Communist Party ("Spartacus League") and the "Steel Helmet League" are founded. In 1933, 1918 Czar Nicholas and his family are shot by the Bolsheviks SA "stormtroopers"
—
II
15
%:^W\
SHU -
^sM
1
!
«^^fl
was demonsfrated. He was
facetting of form
and motion of the
big
city,
new
the simultaneity of
intrigued by the vitality its
phenomena,
lighting,
and
its
transformed
into
a dynamic, increasingly abstract painting
tric
itely
balanced colours
The
perspectives
(fig.
1
rich
time and space, which he
exhibition
spectrum
in
Berlin
Cologne,
exquis-
mentioned
shaped the de-
of influences that
its
centre stood van Gogh, Munch,
Cezanne and Gauguin. Picasso, important in
in
"What able
for
and Munich, was likewise
the
Expressionists
well represented, as
great
is
in
Man
is
in
Man
that he
room and free
in
and a
half later.
Munch described
the exhibition in
in
a
letter of
May 1912: "The
Europe are gathered here
is
lov-
..."
The
make "elbow
face of the established, older
became a member in
1
In
1906 Pechstein
it
again only a year
left
1910.
in
906, was an appeal to
all
progressive makers of art to join forces and bring into being a revolutionary artistic existence.
well.
of Switzerland,
It
The appeal was too passionate
and was
who was
to
be
satis-
accordingly directed to artists outside
reached, for instance,
and Axel Gallen-Kallela
..."
"in
founding manifesto.
Otto Mueller
Germany as
iter.
themselves
their
The Brucke programme, published
fied with local effects,
wildest things being painted
a bridge and not a goal; what
joined the group, as did Nolde, who, however,
were on
and Expressionists from Die Brucke and Der Blaue Re-
is
a passing over and a passing under
is
lives" for
as stated
were the Cubists, Matisse and the Fauves. Kokoschka and Schiele view,
that he
is
four viewed themselves as a chosen elite that set out to
forces,"
velopment of Expressionism. At
working both
elec-
7).
1912 "Sonderbund"
above, reflected the
in
its
Cuno Amiet
(1
868-1 961
very knowledgeable about the Parisian scene, (1
865-1 931
)
man Kees van Dongen (1877-1968),
of Finland.
a Fauvist
In
1
(fig.
908, the Dutch19), joined as
an
member for a good year. The ardently wooed Edvard Munch at least became a passive member, one of the friends and supporters of the group who wasted no time in becoming active - mounting seventy group exhibitions from 905 to 9 3, in Germany and abroad. Break up encrusted structures - that was the warcry. When honorary
The chain of Revolts - a Review On June 7, 1905, the students of architecture Fritz (1880-1960) - who, however, was soon to turn his back on
Bleyl art
-
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff formed in
Dresden the
back 1919
to a
artists'
passage
in
group Die Brucke
Nietzsche's Thus
(fig.
18).
The name went
Spake Zarathustra
(1
883-85):
1
1
Kirchner and his friends painted from the model
in
group studio ses-
sions they used to change places frequently. This spontaneous
change
of viewpoint
and
their rapid
working speed
facilitated
— Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leading German left-wing socialists, are assassinated by a rightist officer 1919 — The "German Workers' Party", the germ of the Nazi Party, seventh member founded: Adolf Hitler becomes is
16
1
its
an
16)
HENRI MATISSE
Seated Girl 1909, Oil
on canvas, 41.5 x 33.5 cm
Cologne,
Museum Ludwig
17)
18) ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER A Group of Artists
ROBERT DELAUNAY
Window on
the City
1912, Oil on canvas, painted dead frame, 46 x 40 cm Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle
almost automatic approach to drawing and a
and schooled
their
eye
Museum Ludwig
summary
painting style,
reduced form). Summers were
tor simplified,
spent at the Moritzburg Lakes outside Dresden, where the group
man and
envisaged a harmony of sions of civilization,
doorstep
(fig. 8).
as
it
free of the compul-
were, a Gauguinesque Tahiti at their
looked back
still
were susceptible as much
who
in
awe
(fig.
tried to
to the greats of art his-
to Post-Impressionist
influences as to medieval woodcuts
dence
life
Yet the Expressionist revolutionaries
leave tradition behind tory,
or,
nature, a
25).
that the styles of the individual group
It
and Fauvist
surely no coinci-
is
members
are hardly distinguishable from one another. They were
at this time
all
fascinated
by the art of the South Pacific and sub-Saharan African peoples,
which they studied
at the
Dresden Museum
of Ethnology.
The black
contours, angular figure types, masklike faces and
vital
poses of the
part from
this
experience.
figures
their
in
paintings derived
Kirchner discovered
in
in
an English illustrated volume examples of
ancient Indian painting and rapidly adapted them to his needs. The
Gauguin exhibition
at Galerie Arnold,
Dresden,
further impetus for the group's concern with the
and depiction of non-European
1911 the Brucke
In
Walden had
just
opened
moved
his gallery,
1919
—
In
to Berlin.
Britain
There Herwarth
Der Sturm, and begun publishing
the U.S., a prohibition on alcohol
independence from
Kokoschka. Through Der Sturm the Brucke
whose
comes
editors
into force
1921
was
artists
made
contacts with
Expressionism, and also with the radical anti-bourgeois circle
literary
around Franz Pfemfert and
painters' part
Die Aktion, established
his journal
March 1911. These contacts resulted
in
toward issues of content.
and
whose
writer
him famous
A
link
between Kirchner and
active
every
in
woodcut
big-city novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz,
1928. Such contacts
in
sionist artists to
endpapers, for
book
in
An example was frontispiece
began
initially
two-coloured
of poetry,
remained together
Umbra
to react in
The differences
in
Berlin, diver-
a different way to the moloch of the big if
no longer as a group,
city,
fled to various
Dangast on the
East Prussia, or the Baltic island of Fehmarn.
within the group grew, until
voked by Kirchner, as Die Brucke informed 27,
in
soon became apparent. Each
places: the Moritzburg Lakes, the village of
on May
the forty-seven
and
Georg Heym's volume
their previous collective style
from which they occasionally, idyllic
urge of Expres-
genres and become
illustration.
Although the Brucke
artist
art
psychiatrist
would make
1924, one of the most cogent and significant works of Ex-
pressionist
gences
work.
field of creative
woodcut Kirchner created vitae, of
facilitated the
transcend the limitations of
illustrations,
in
a stronger orientation on the
Der Sturm was forged by Alfred Doblin (1878-1957), a
North Sea, Nidden
the revolutionary journal of that name, one of
for Indian
1910 provided a modes of perception in
cultures.
artists
cm
1926-27, Oil on canvas, 168 x 126 Cologne,
its final its
breakup was pro-
friends
and supporters
1913.
1920
— The Communist Party of China
— Mahatma Gandhi begins his non-violent battle is
formed
17
KEES VAN DONGEN
19)
Portrait of
Fernande
1906, Oil on canvas, 100 x 81
cm
Private collection
20)
KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF
Girl at her Toilette
on canvas, 84.5 x 76 cm Brikke-Museum
1912, Oil Berlin,
21) EMIL
NOLDE
Prophet 1912,
"Munich was resplendent," declared Thomas Mann
1955) ly,
in
his
1902
story Gladius Dei,
He
(
875—
probably meant this ironical-
around the turn of the century the Bavarian metropolis hosted
for
not only relatively progressive, Art Nouveau-inspired tendencies but
thoroughly commercialized conservative styles.
Still,
the art centre
was
the way,
Initially
of Art Nouveau, Kandinsky returned
the Gauguin memorial exhibition
in
to his
naturally felt at
home. Two years
version
new home in 1906 from many new ideas. These
Paris with
he proceeded to combine with elements of Russian
he
German
an adherent of Jugendstil, the
later
folk art, in
Kandinsky and
long-time consort, Gabriele Munter, were working
in
which
his pupil
and
Murnau, Upper
p.
was the
first artists'
colours and strong black contours.
brilliant
1909, the two artists established the
gung Munchen (NKVM, other founding
or
New
members were
And another year
Neue
Kunstlervereini-
Artists Association of Munich).
Alexei von Jawlensky
(fig.
23),
Neue
Sachlichkeit artists Adolf Erbsloh
numbers
association to include large
or guests, a circumstance that
was
of
largely the
tic
ideals
in
the sublimating melting pot of the
diverse quarters
were welcome. This was
second association show
at Galerie
spiritual.
all
artis-
Impulses from
illustrated particularly
Thannhauser, Munich,
by the
in
1910,
which included works by Picasso, Braque, Derain, van Dongen Rouault
19),
(fig.
11),
(fig.
and the brothers David (1882-1967) and
(1886-1917). Erbsloh exemplified the
NKVM
at the time,
in
the
way
in
international
which he proceed-
ed from Art Nouveau, Post-Impressionist and early Cubist influences to a
reduced and concentrated imagery
in
highly luminous colours
The
which could stand beside that of Fauvism. Yet Kandinsky,
Ma-
had already taken the next step. That same year he painted what he
rianne von Werefkin, Vladimir von Bechteyeff (1878-1971), the two future
(Alexander
The NKVM, by
people.
Kandinsky, the association's chairman, envisaged overcoming
networking of the
later, in
literary
the self-satisfied art of the salons by aiming at a synthesis of
Vladimir Burlyuk
forms,
and
result of Werefkin's strong personality.
verre eglomise, and adapting this technique based on
stylized
dancers
historians,
art
48), musicians
women, as members
Bavaria, studying the folk art of the Alpine foothill region, copying flat
including
others,
Sacharoff - see
resplendent enough to attract the genius of Kandinsky as the century got underway.
by
joined
cm Museum
Woodcut, 32.4 x 22
Bemried, Buchheim
programmatically
(1881-1947) and
titled his "first
for his part,
abstract watercolour".
The press was shocked by the
association's show. Franz
Marc
Alexander Kanoldt (1881-1939), the significant Karl Hofer (1878-
reacted with a positive review, and at the beginning of 1911 joined
1955) - who would later, over his own protests, continually be reckoned an Expressionist - and finally, Alfred Kubin. Soon the group was
the
1922
NKVM.
troversy
Yet that December, plans for a third exhibition led to con-
and a
rupture. For spurious reasons the "moderate" faction
— James Joyce publishes his novel Ulysses; Germany, Bertolt Brecht becomes known for his play Drums in the Night 1922 — Howard Carter discovers the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tut-ench-Amun in
rejected a largely abstract painting by Kandinsky. Miinter,
arranged a sort of
rival
reaction,
In
NKVM
Marc and Kubin resigned from the
he and
and
rapidly
exhibition, likewise held at Galerie
Thann-
hauser: "Der Blaue Reiter", 191 1-12, at which Macke,
Campendonk,
Delaunay, and the composer Arnold Schoenberg were also represent-
ed with pictures. Thereafter the works were on view
German ally
cities,
including Berlin, at the Sturm gallery.
in
several other
Walden
addition-
showed works by Paul Klee and the Russians Jawlensky and
whom
Werefkin (both of
would leave the
NKVM
in
Reiter, published in
which would not go beyond one cover designs, most of them blue,
Marc horses,
plain years later.
I
riders.
in
some
of the
al-
by Reinhard Piper,
24). "Both of us loved
the name," as Kandinsky would ex-
Conceivably associations with the mysterious "blue
(1772-1801) had placed
Romanticism also played some
disciplinary
(fig.
role here.
in
the cradle
Revealing for the inter-
conception of the almanach were essays that represent
most
crucial artists'
one by Marc, on "The 'Fauves' "The 'Fauves' of Russia".
statements of modernism. There was of Germany",
and one by Burlyuk, on
Macke wrote about
his paintings
Kandinsky
in
"Masks", Kubin about
Composition". Schoenberg wrote an article about music and
— Mussolini's March on Rome provokes a fascist coup 1923 — Germany,
confirming art.
The
his,
its
re-
were reproduced
"latest painterly
displayed
movement," postulated Marc
children's
lerie
"First
Hans
common this
style,
how
sented,
was
Comprehensive
Goltz,
to
the almanach,
art".
in
their yearbook, the artists in-
volved formed no coherent group along Brucke
endary
in
and the great Orient, with that so strongly expressive,
and
primal folk art
his dual gift as
connecting filaments with the Gothic and the primi-
fine
"its
in
lines.
The now-leg-
Exhibition" of the Blauer Reiter at
Ga-
February 1912, was not intended to manifest any
but to show, "through the diversity of the forms repre-
the inmost desire of artists takes manifold shape."
be demonstrated on an international
of pictures by Gauguin, van
painter Henri
the
in
was deeply moved by
Kandinsky's, theory of the analogy between music and
tives, with Africa
level,
And
by the inclusion
Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, the "naive"
Rousseau (1844-1910), by Delaunay, Derain, Vlaminck,
Picasso, Braque, by various Brucke artists (despite Kandinsky's seri-
ous misgivings), and furthermore, by the Russian avant-gardists Mikhail Larionov
Natalia
(1881-1964), Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) and
Goncharova
In his
(1
881 -1 962).
essay "The
New
Painting", published
March 1912, Marc demanded
in Italy
In
particular
Schoenberg's compositions and paintings, and saw
"Free Music". Kandinsky contributed an essay "Concerning Stage
1922
well.
Despite the unity displayed
Kandinsky made ten different
watercolour
Hence
flower" which the poet Novalis of
edition.
May 1912
and two of
1912).
During these eventful years Kandinsky and Marc planned an
manach: Der Blaue
lationship to words,
almanach as
inflation
in
the journal
Pan
for
that the profound spiritual aspect of
1923 reaches a peak when one dollar
is
—
In
Munich, the Hitler Putsch
equivalent to 4.2
trillion
fails
marks
19
nature be liberated from the fetters of the visible
Beckmann "artistic
in
Max
painting.
replied, in the next issue of Pan, that the crucial thing
perception,
combined with
guin wallpaper, Matisse-print cloth,
little
rail
began and would
Gau-
at "framed
Picasso chessboards, and
Siberian-Bavarian martyr posters." This controversy of the polarization of art
and truthfulness
artistic objectivity
be depicted," and then went on to
to the things to
was
between abstraction and
was symptomatic
figuration that
now
up throughout the twentieth century.
flare
cities,
not only
in
Germany
and Sweden. The outbreak of the these
First
in
New hope
Lyonel Feininger,
World War put an abrupt end to
followed the debacle
who had been
when
affiliated with
the German-American the Blauer Reiter since
1913, joined with Kandinsky, Klee and Jawlensky Blaue
Vier, or
The Blue
Munich period
to the
Four, a
Bauhaus
Oskar Kokoschka, drawings published
1910, and
whose
until
editing
in
1
924
25).
of Vienna,
was
the
first
form Die
Expressionist to have
1911 he remained a close collaborator and
to
illustrations
of the
crucially
many
shaped
links that
to Berlin
at the
life
its
look.
connected the
of Expressionism, although
Thus vari-
he basically be-
Austrian branch. His countryman Richard Gerstl brillant,
age
angry "young savage".
In
1
908 he
took
(1883his
own
of twenty-five, not without previously burning his letters,
notes and a good proportion of his works. The surviving paintings
26) reflect Gerstl's incomparably free and nervous handling of
and what might be called
his
Kokoschka and Schiele stand its
"dematerialization"
decade
for the
Schneede
soul,
to
As
art historian
He, art
...
Uwe
M.
body and Kokosch-
clearly reflect the intensi-
which they ascertained the relationships between body and
and how they attempted, under the influence
develop a
exaltations
dance
figures.
which Austrian
in
writes, "Schiele's daring torsions of the
ka's unique series of revelatory portraits ty with
of
(fig.
paint,
oppressive themes projected what Karl Kraus termed the "ex-
perimental setup for the end of the world".
pictorially effective
were moreover a reaction
of the period."
Sigmund Freud,
of
body language, whose wide-ranging
Kokoschka aimed
Viennese eurhythmic
to the
at creating a
as he himself wrote, and a contemporary
man
"deranged por-
of letters, Albert
Ehrenstein, credited him with being a "slitter-open of souls".
The
in
of the journal,
its
908) was a
trait",
Der Sturm. Walden had brought him
ous separate streams
intriguing
Max Beckmann,
the so different sculptors Wil-
helm Lehmbruck and Ernst Barlach, the Worpswede/Paris painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, the prophet of of these in
191
were
1. In
doom Ludwig Meidner -
loners, despite the fact that the
a coachmen's pub
in
Berlin, a city
latter
all
founded a group
Meidner called "the
in-
— After Lenin's death, Stalin wins the struggle for political leadership Russia 1924 — First Winter Olympic Games Chamonix, France 1926 — Sergei Eisenstein makes avant-garde film Battleship Potemkin
take place
20
in
group that passed on ideas from the
(fig.
Kokoschka embodied one
1924
in
Hungary, Norway, Finland
which were such a crucial breakthrough for mod-
activities,
ernism.
but also
1
and
Blue Rider exhibitions were on view from 1912 to 1914 twelve
longed to
in
in
ERICH HECKEL
22)
Male
24)
1919, Color woodcut, 46.2
ALEXEI
23)
x 32.6
"Per Blaue Reiter" Almanach x 21.1 cm Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
cm
for
1912, Color woodcut, 27.9
Brucke-Museum
Berlin,
WASSILY KANDINSKY
Cover
Portrait
VON JAWLENSKY
Head of an Adolescent Boy (known as 1912, Oil on cardboard, 59 x 53.5 cm Dortmund,
Museum am
tellectual
and moral
Heracles)
Ostwall
capital of the world,"
a short-lived group of Jewish
he formed "The Patheticals",
who had
artists
their
breakthrough
at
the Sturm gallery. Yet Meidner rejected Matisse, Kandinsky and Marc, just as
he did the Brucke members
who
who, he maintained, "favoured Negro
away from contemporary Steinhardt (1887-1968),
subjects."
art,
lived in his
neighbourhood,
which only drew attention
While the "Pathetiker" Jakob
who would emigrate to Palestine in 1933, down into the 1920s, as an Expression-
could doubtlessly be viewed, ist
with a stylistic and expressive affinity to Meidner, Dix
many
one wonders whether they can properly be associated with Expresall.
The same issue
is
raised,
in part,
even by
sociocritically
who came from realism, or by the Dada or Neue Sachlichkeit tendencies.
oriented artists like Kathe Kollwitz,
Grosz and
later
And late
it
is
Dix, with their
an issue that becomes extremely controversial
work
of
someone
like
in
face of the
film
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (fig. 27) with a painting by Meid-
28),
(fig.
whose
among
ences,
Kubin had
Alfred
flections from In
light re-
concealed streetlamps.
many
respects, the
cinema drew
for a
Ghosts, Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) had two bright lamp, casting
from contempo-
inspiration
raneous theatre productions. As early as 1906,
scene
in
Ibsen's
actors rush past a
enormous shadows on the back
wall that
gave the
impression they were being pursued by demons. Similiarly, in
of a fate from
is
German
films
shadows were employed
which there was no escape.
In
his
like
omens
the famous film by
Murnau (1922), Nosferatu the
announced by
pressionist films
and Architecture
not
been considered): the distorted per-
originally
the cubic buildings seemingly on the verge of collapse; the
ance
Film
was
spective of diagonally converging lanes that intersect at acute angles;
Friedrich Wilhelm
Lovis Corinth.
precipitous lines reveal Cubist and Futurist influ-
others. Responsible for the expressive decor
the director, Robert Wiene, but the film designers (a task for which
and Grosz,
other artists lacked such similarities of style to the point that
sionism at
1919 ner
shadow ascending the
vampire's, appearstairs.
German Ex-
caused a sensation not least on account of their
tense chiaroscuro, their harsh contrasts of
light
and dark, and
their
sharp illumination of a single figure or object while the surroundings
German
Expressionist film focused the potentials offered by
painting and other
content. This
1926
media by
radically heightening both their
becomes apparent when we compare the
form and
sets of the
remained plunged
in
gloom. This principle, which
reminiscent of Expressionist
Murnau's Faust
film of
prints,
came
is
so strongly
to a final culmination
in
1926.
— Physicist Erwin Schrodinger develops theory of quantum wave mechanics 1927 — France, Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu published 1927 — Black dancer Josephine Baker celebrates triumphs Paris
novel cycle
In
is
in
21
While the
explored
film
life's
abysmal depths, Expressionist
architecture - a term whose use can be traced back
emphasized
plans and visions but not
in
and palaces grew
a paper sky.
into
In
in reality.
many
of
ed Michel de Klerc
(
1
884- 923) and 1
Piet
matter and
An
The "storms
through glass structures recalling
gravity
of steel" of the First
"New Man" so yearned
even zoomorphic In
into architecture, expressively splintered forms,
projects,
late
to
all
partook of a socialistic urge for world
1919, twelve architects joined with Bruno Taut
Germany, examples
of built Expressionist architecture, naturlevel,
remained few and
far
between,
such as Hans Poelzig's (1869-1936) Grosses Schauspielhaus
Tower in
1918-19, and in
Potsdam,
contrast,
1
Erich
920-2
greater freedom than
in
in
.
The
architects of the
architecture not only
Germany,
Pehnt notes. Noteworthy
22
1
is
in
Mendelsohn's (1887-1953) Einstein
Amsterdam
produced well-nigh uncountable numbers of
Holland, Expressionism
1928
Schmidt-Rottluff
war
the
it
began
also lasted longer," as
Amsterdam
architects'
School,
buildings. "In
earlier
and had
Wolfgang
group
1927 — Charles A. Lindbergh — Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
come
"Archi-
flies
in
inflation. Didn't
one
Christ
of his woodcuts,
in
home
Appear
birth
Rather, a
to a republic
to
You? asked
view of the dismal post-
situation.
Beckmann, Dix and Grosz face of
on a much less fantastic
Berlin,
shaken by hunger and
form a correspondence group they dubbed "The
Glass Chain". In
1 ).
World War did not give
thoroughly beaten and despondent army trudged
buildings overspanning the Alps, music of the
purity,
spheres congealed
ally
1
1
for by Expressionism.
symbols
(1880-1938)
includ-
(1 88 - 96
National Art or Morbid Mysticism? Things to
to the
improvement.
1915 and
over-
Gothic cathedrals, a fascination with gigantic crystalline towers as of
in
Kramer
Crystal cathedrals
cases, this fictional archi-
tecture extended even to the design of earth and stars.
coming
tectura et Amicitia", which appeared on the scene
Utopian aspect, which by definition could be put into
its
practice only
to
1912/13 -
its
human
wrecks,
its
(fig.
4) provokingly depicted the true
disabled veterans and war profiteers,
whores and new demagogues. Although the November Revolution breathed
some
final life into
Expressionism,
in
what Ernst Bloch de-
scribed as a combination of "Marxism and prayer",
more than a tions for a
brief flicker.
new
art that
"Have the Expressionists
would brand the essence of
NO! NO! NO!" declared the "Dadaist Manifesto"
of
it
seemed
fulfilled life
into
little
expecta-
our flesh?
1918, triggering a
series of violent attacks on Expressionist attitudes by a younger generation of artists. "False
mann
called the
and sentimental morbid mysticism", Beck-
movement
in
1918.
the North Atlantic alone, and immediately
1928
becomes an American national hero first Mickey Mouse silent films
— Walt Disney creates
25)
LYONEL FEININGER
Cathedral of Socialism 1919,
Woodcut
for the
Bauhaus, 30.5 x 18.9
26)
programme of the
State
cm
RICHARD GERSTL Laughing
Self-portrait.
1908, Oil
on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
Vienna, Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere
27)
ROBERT WIENE
The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari
1919, Film scene
In
new
the 1920s Dadaism
was succeeded by Neue
art of sobriety or objectivity,
a fanatical adherence to truth
development Schlichter
the
who
title
of Dix, Grosz, Karl
1926
Hubbuch (1891-1979),
painting by Grosz
in
In
Pillars
or Rudolf
of Society (thus
the Nationalgalerie, Berlin),
inherited the prewar world seemingly
to flaunt
further,
known as Verism, as exemplified by the
(1890-1955). The perverted new
of a
Sachlichkeit, a
and taking the tendency even
unchanged, already began
enemies,
listed its
who
Thomas Mann and
Bertolt Brecht,
apart from authors such as
Kurt Tucholsky, included
and even Hofer.
began mounting erate"
In
museum
1933,
directors
who toed
the Nazi
again for the most part Expressionist.
art,
contrast, the "National Socialist
German Students
by Goebbels, credited Expressionism with possessing "true
entry as a revolutionary force,
in
the
Weimar Republic protagonists
Expressionism suddenly found themselves part of the
A
case
in
point
artistic
of
estab-
around 1919, had digested impulses from Delaunay to
produce pictures reminiscent of Campendonk.
In
1919 Molzahn pub-
lished his "Manifesto of Absolute Expressionism",
in
which he pro-
in
vain. In
1937
was
it
at
face-saving
primarily Expressionists
ate
Art".
the
Moscow
Even the German emigres who
whether
it
exile journal
was
Das Wort in
hotly 1
revolutionary or reactionary. After
greatest echo outside Germany,
found
its
result,
some
debated Expressionism
of the
museums and
most
in
1
The
Expressionism were written by Americans. Many art that
bourgeoisie versus an art that mystically celebrated the
- also divided the ideologues ing at the "Militant
1928
League
for
shocked the
world were thunderstruck
German
sionist Painting, declared
of incipient National Socialism.
German
Culture",
founded
private collections.
in
soul
Speak-
1929, Al-
most
central
movements
coincidence that the
first
when Peter in
in
1
957
Selz,
earliest standard
style,
now
in
author of
that Expressionism
German
art
German Expreswas "one
And
was
of the
likely
no
"ism" received the
ti-
the art of this century."
homegrown American
the
in
works on
it
— Kurt Weill composes the Threepenny Opera a jazz with provided by Bertolt Brecht 1929 — Plummeting prices on the New York Stock Exchange trigger a worldwide economic in
in
agree
945, Expressionism
significant Expressionist pictures are
U.S.
Expressionism - an
to
the United States. As a
rhythmical Constructivism. of
re-
who were
937-38, were unable
claimed Expressionistic design principles as the basis of a strongly
The ambivalence
German
ultimately
demagogically humbled by the notorious Munich exhibition "Degener-
was Johannes Molzahn (1892-1965), who
before emigrating to the United States had close ties with Bauhaus artists and,
mained
chauvinistic attempt
In
League", supported
character". This
Wilhelm Hausenstein proclaimed the
line
exhibitions that pilloried "cultural Bolshevist", "degen-
and "subversive"
1918 the
art historian
artists,
mostly Expressionists, such as Beckmann, Kandinsky, Klee and Nolde,
an ominous new symbol: the swastika.
death of Expressionism. His verdict was premature. After making their
lishment.
Rosenberg
fred
lyrics
crisis
23
LUDWIG MEIDNER
28)
(Villa Kochmann. Dresden) on canvas on cardboard, 92.7 x 78 cm
The Corner House 1913, Oil
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Madrid,
HANS SCHAROUN
29)
Community Centre
Idea for a
on paper, 37.8 x 27.8 cm Akademie der Kiinste, Sammlung Baukunst
1919, Watercolor Berlin,
JACKSON POLLOCK
30)
Blue Poles 1953, Oil, enamel and aluminium paint on canvas,
x 4,89
12,11
m
Canberra, Australian National Gallery
tie
"Abstract Expressionism". Alfred H. Barr, director of the
Modern
Art,
transferred a concept that had
been applied
sky's abstract compositions to that painting of the
which
on
relied
Museum
of
to Kandin-
1940s and '50s
spontaneous action and emotional expression,
direct,
name only a few, by Willem de Kooning, Robert Mother(1915-1991) and Franz Kline (1910-1962), and which culmi-
as practised, to well
nated
in
the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock
Shortly after the war, the survivors of the
(1912-1 956;
German
fig.
30).
Expressionist
generation - Schmidt-Rottluff, Pechstein, and Hofer (who must be
named
connection despite the fact that he was not a dyed-in-
in this
the-wool Expressionist) - established the Hochschule fur Bildende Kiinste, or College of Visual Arts,
include
Georg
Koberling tive
(b.
1
(b.
in
Berlin,
whose
1938), K.H. Hodicke
later
(b.
students would
1938) and Bernd
938). With them and other "young wild painters", figura-
and/or symbolic Neo-Expressionism or Neo-Fauvism appeared
on the scene
in
contemporary Cucchi
(b.
1
it
the 1970s and soon burgeoned into a key stream
art in
Germany, but also
in Italy,
in
as exemplified by Enzo
949). The radical gesture, to whose acceptance as a mod-
ernist device
as
Baselitz
Expressionism contributed not a
ever was.
It
little, is
serves as an antidote whenever
art
as violent today
threatens to grow
too narcissistic and self-satisfied, and reminds us with a shock of the
emotional basis of
all
good
art.
1929 1929
24
— The Museum of Modern
Art,
— The Geneva Convention, signed by forty-seven nations, requires humane treatment of war prisoners
the most important of
its
kind
in
the world,
is
founded
in
New
York
1
930
— Based on a novel by Heinrich Mann, Joseph von Sternberg makes The Blue Angel, a sound film that catapults Marlene Dietrich to stardom — When his opponent, Jack Sharkey, disqualified, Max Schmeling of Germany becomes the non-American world boxing champion
1930
is
first
25
ERNST BARLACH
1920
The Refugee Oak
sculpture,
54 x 57 x 20.5
cm
Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich
More than those Brucke
who
painters
ated
works oriented to
plastic
exotic and
occasionally cre-
primitive art
(tig. 6),
His
concern
central
composed
of heavy, blocky
expression. This
logical
fectly
d.
in
Rostock
evident
is
per-
The Refugee,
in
which seamlessly
up with
links
Barlach's prewar work.
Here the human
figure has
been reduced
And although con-
the plastic character of the volumes and the incredible
way they
take possession of the surrounding space are retained. The slight
base
ris-
to the right leads to the feature that ultimately lends
the figure the appearance of a single sweeping movement: a diagonal cut into the wood, running from the bare foot on the folds of the cloak which the refugee
in
his
hands and
through the
draws protectively around himself,
then continuing abruptly to the upper
an oval to reveal
left
face.
right,
The
where the cloak opens
striking
the sense of earlier or academic ideals
in art,
head
is
into
not beautiful
but has coarse, ugly
features that vaguely recall the appearance of Kathe Kollwitz. gaze, suffering and anticipating worse things to come,
is
The
directed into
the distance. The painfully visionary nature of this gaze and the face protruding beyond the contours of the
wooden
block anticipates the
uncertain future, while the gently curving contour of the back turn
away from everything the anonymous refugee has
The human
figure
comes a symbol 26
reduced
to essentials, as
seems
left
to
behind.
always with Barlach, be-
of a state, a supraindividual, archetypal situation.
1910
in
in
the medieval town of Gustrow on the Baltic
was
continually confronted with statues
of the apostles created
by Claus Berg (died between
1535) - highly dramatic,
plastically
1
532 and
modelled and yet drawn out
into
the plane, their coarse-grained, greyish-yellow oak contributing to the
both expressive and ascetic impression of the figures. These works
etched themselves manifested in
ceived to be viewed from a certain vantage point, an ideal plane of re-
ing of the
resulted not least from an encounter with late-
and sculpture. Barlach, who was also a significant
coast. At the cathedral there he
in
in
Barlach's mind, and his affinity with
only a slightly
them
is
more modern, somewhat abstracted form
The Refugee. After the First World War, Barlach declined offers to teach at
to essentials, the con-
tours and interior detailing being well-nigh abstract.
lation,
spirit
art
ism, settled
Expressionist
truly
forms with heightened psycho-
Wedel,
matter with
printmaker and one of the most important playwrights of Expression-
ures
in
inert
Gothic graphic
Barlach can be considered an
rapidly crystallized: to intuse fig-
1870 1938
range of well-nigh crude formal means with which
limited
exponent ot sculpture.
b.
The
Barlach achieved an unprecedented expressiveness and suffused
the academies
reached him.
its
in
apex
On January
in
Dresden and
Berlin.
the 1930s, Nazi art
30, 1933,
in
Long before
critics
had set
his
success
their sights
Kathe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann from the Prussian Academy of Barlach gave a radio talk
on
protest at the forced resignation of
titled "Artists of
and public sculptures were destroyed.
the Time". His
Arts,
monuments
27
MAX BECKMANN
1909
scene from the "Earthquake on
Oil St.
x 262
canvas, 253.5
Messina"
in
cm
Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequest of Morton D.
Beckmann
played a role
May
in
twentieth-century art that over-
many
shadowed oeuvre rises
like
His
others.
an erratic boul-
the landscape of
German
der
in
art.
Yet certain points of contact
After
finishing
Weimar
in
art
- where he
trips to Paris
impressed
his
1903, he
by
the
d.
- and
in
New
Avignon,
York
by
Eugene Delacroix
(1798-1863) and Paul Cezanne
Florence.
to
From 1907 onwards
alongside Corinth's paintings, were the Secession exhibitions
in
vision of the Resurrection,
scenes
The Sinking of the
Berlin.
his
among
enormous canvases,
The age
Crucifixion, a
and slaughter, and even feverishly doted
on just
such sensations. this
Scene from
Italy in
died. In his diary
newspapers about the
report on the earth-
he noted: "Then
terrible disaster in
I
1
20,000 inhab-
read more
in
the
Messina, and the passage
where half-naked released prison inmates attack other people during the frightful confusion painting,
fault with
praising
gave
me
likely finished in April
its
its
The
...
the idea for a
which Beckmann attempted to capture
in
was
1909. The
caricatural exaggeration
'M
is
new
"all
picture."
The
pulsating flesh-
critics of
the day found
and sensationalism, only one
pathos, which can be traced back to Delacroix. varied treatment of the figures gathered into small groups
forms the underlying chord of the composition
The eye
tle for survival is
with a rape
The
may
zsche. This
in
dull
earth colours.
led into the picture by the half-undressed, crouching
man
in
in
parallel to this
two figures each -
scene - who are involved
seems
to say,
relatively intact buildings at the in
in
a strug-
simultaneously per-
is
upper edge
front of which the bat-
taking place.
The young Beckmann was impressed by the explain why, apart from the
themes
vitalism of Niet-
of threat, fear
and
mod-
violence that can be seen as a metaphor for the brutality of the
ern age, such paintings contain an undertone of fascination with crime, with an unleashing of archetypal instincts of cruelty.
Though cates the
artistically
way
in
not entirely mature, the painting clearly
indi-
which Beckmann's early work developed out of a
sombre, Old Masterly naturalism with scattered Post-Impressionist accents towards an
confessed,
which about 80,000 of the
ly life"
left
have the effect of an impenetrable barricade
through
quake
Messina
beginning on the
news
after reading a
itants of
of figures, on a rising diagonal, are groups of
trio
the Earthquake in Messina
on December 31, 1908, southern
struggling to maintain his composure. Placed
Expressionism whose fundamental feeling and
harsh dissonances of content lent
Beckmann began
in
seems
the annual sensations at
These included a
of rapine
Titanic (1912).
behind her likewise
trying to avert her fate.
if
cruel
medieval Pieta by the Master of Leipzig,
next to him rises up
as
petrator and victim.
made
in
the forehead, bears
cerned.
was 1884 1950
in
woman The kneeling man
gle to the death. Man, the artist
in
wounded
the pain with waning powers. The naked
with Expressionism can be dis-
studies
b.
the right foreground, who, seriously
ply
have
come hind
out,
all
the sewers
debasements and desecrations,
Everything
down
in
breakdown.
me
to the last
Beckmann's decision
to the front. There, tal
a sense of violence. As the
would pick my way through
"I
all its
to.
it
in
in
the
way
drop
..."
This
order to paint.
of formal imagination
was the
to volunteer for the
summer 1915, he
in
artist
of the world, I
sim-
must
radical impulse be-
medical corps and go
suffered a physical and
men-
29
MAX BECKMANN
1918-19
The Night on
Oil
x 154 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
canvas, 133
Diisseldorf,
His experiences ly
wrote to
his wife
in
the First World War, which, as he euphorical-
1915, provided "fodder" for
April
in
soon
his art,
brought Beckmann to the brink of mental collapse. They also altered his art fundamentally,
application
more
in
"linear"
and took on
was no coincidence
that
graphic oevre between years
both formal and iconographic terms. The paint
grew thinner and more
was outshone by
ecstatically distorted
Beckmann created
1915 and
After the outbreak of the in
poses and features.
finished
oil
became
in
those
1919, Night,
in
in
November Revolution
Germany, and
political
1918,
vio-
assassination
was
in
the order of the day. Beckmann's painting, too, rips the thin veneer off the aspect of bourgeois
angled into
attic
We
civilization.
look into a small, Gothically
room, the perspective lines of whose floorboards turn
a narrow stage teeming with actors. Three thugs have broken
and are routinely and tants,
one grabbing a
sadistically raping girl
as
open window. The torso and arm
is
if
it
in
and murdering the inhabi-
about to throw her out of the skewed
leg position of the strangled
man, whose
being twisted by a pipe-smoking "technocrat of violence", re-
calls the figure of Christ in a Deposition, his cruelly twisted foot per-
haps stemming from Grunewald's Christ Crucified Isenheim Altarpiece
(fig. 1).
The thug
in
his late-Gothic
at the right in the
peaked cap
is
a paraphrase on a beggar from the fresco The Triumph of Death at the
Campo Santo
The legs
in
Pisa,
from the
of the female figure
first half
who
is
violently forced apart, serve in formal
of the fourteenth century.
the true centre of the drama,
terms to
link
the two halves of
the composition.
Despite
its
implicit story,
the painting runs counter to every law
of logic, a strange, crystalline petrifaction having taken
possession of
the events and figures. The howling dog remains just as silent as the
gramophone; the toppled candle
seem
signifies death.
ple to the crushing of the Spartacus revolt
30
Though
it
plausible to detect references to current events here, for
would
exam-
and the assassination
of
"In
my
Night, too,
metaphysical
in
meant
human beings an image
in
January 1919, the ambigu-
"giving
In artistic
In
Beck-
one should not overlook the
the objective." Metaphysics, to again cite the
artist,
of their destiny".
terms, metaphysics implied transforming figures into
prototypes and stylizing the pictorial space, making
it
into
a conglom-
erate or complex network of "Cubo-Futurist" faceted planes and
sharp-angled contrasts (which bore parallels with Expressionist sets;
joint.
and Rosa Luxemburg
mann's own words,
It
the greater part of his
922. Yet everything done
1
this large-format
which the world has gone out of
lence and chaos reigned
figures and faces
fluid,
Karl Liebknecht
ous and enigmatic nature of the image remain predominant.
fig.
27),
and
it
film
implied replacing naturalistic depiction by an
alienating distortion.
This key work and masterpiece of
German
painting
between
whose
the wars already contains the most important elements with aid
Beckmann would
dam
until
later find his
1947, then as an emigre
genuine in
style, in exile in
the United States. The
faceted forms would be increasingly abandoned
expanses
of colour
Beckmann's farewell ing "sentimental
Amster-
in
favour of
linear,
brilliant
and broad, black contours. This amounted to Expressionism,
morbid mysticism".
to
which he now rejected as be-
31
HEINRICH
CAMPENDONK
1913
bucoNc Landscape Oil St.
on canvas, 100 x 85.5 cm Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequest of Morton D.
Campendonk's Landscape, whose
Bucolic
title
suggests
a kind of earthly paradise out Antique mythology, able
such
as
scrutiny.
On
is
of
recogniz-
on
only
first
May
closer
sight the vertical
format has the effect of a stage, bursting with forms, as
filled to in
the geometrically reduced, splin-
stract b.
1889
in
Krefeld,
d.
1957
in
Amsterdam
occasionally
shapes of
ab-
nearly
human
plants,
beings, animals overlapping
one
another ultimately produce not
an effect of chaos but of a
solidly built pictorial structure.
The many
and various tense oppositions and complementary colour contrasts are brought into an order that Partially
down
calculated
to the last detail.
modelled elements with suggestions of spatial depth are
ways integrated ation
is
in
the dominant
and the important
Franz Marc
flat
role played by animals
in
the scene
may
lyrical, fairy-tale
bring
mood
Upper Bavarian verre eglomise. The facetted interpenetration
of
of fig-
and landscape, the constructive employment of form,
ures, animals
colour and
al-
light,
clearly
echo Delaunay's
Like his close friend Macke,
and active mainly there and,
later, in
Campendonk - born Dusseldorf -
is
in
Krefeld
often associated
//ith
the theoretical construct of Rhenish Expressionism. Yet the years
that
were decisive
to his artistic
development
in
terms of style and
thematic reorientation were those he spent under the influence of the Blauer Reiter
From
1
artists in
905
to
1
Munich, 191 1-14.
909 Campendonk was
a student at the Krefeld
School of Decorative Arts. His teacher there, the Dutchman Jan Thorn-Prikker of Art
32
(
1868- 1932),
Nouveau but
introduced him not only to the stylization
to the art of
Cezanne and van Gogh, and
their re-
and strongly con-
of line
From 1911, when Campendonk moved
creasingly under the
to
know Macke and
latter's influence.
So
to Sindels-
Marc, he
came
Delaunay's Orphist coloration that
pendonk's lack of
voices complained of
critical
lyrically
temperament and Marc's mystical pantheism came
Though Marc's animal realm continued began
to integrate glimpses of the
fairy-tale,
to fascinate him,
everyday farm
almost Romantic atmosphere of
their free-floating motifs. This approach,
personal of
style, did
not find
1913 and 1914, and
Reiter. In the
and
Cam-
originality.
Yet gradually the differences between his more
the
in-
he adopt Marc's
avidly did
Cubist, crystalline compositions shot through with Futurist vectors
its
life
until
tuned
the
fore.
Campendonk
around him
into
compositions with
which would mature
culmination
finally after
his
to
the last
into his
Munich years
the dissolution of the Blauer
meantime Campendonk had
further reduced his visual
idiom to complex and solid geometric terms, a development manifest-
ed
in
Bucolic Landscape.
During the
from the 1
926,
military
First
and
living in Krefeld,
World War, Campendonk was soon discharged retired to
ings. In
Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg.
he accepted the
Dusseldorf Academy. His
later
In
offer of a teaching post at the
oeuvre included significant glass paint-
1933, Campendonk emigrated to Belgium,
Amsterdam.
principles of design.
autonomous expressiveness
Upper Bavaria and got
in
pattern. Features of the color-
mind; other features recall the
to
dorf
if
reaction to a horror vacui. Yet
tered,
liance on the
trasting colours.
later
going on to
33
LOVIS CORINTH
1922
The Red Christ on wood, 129 x 108 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne Oil
Staatsgalerie
Lovis of the
one
depiction
Corinth's
Crucifixion
doubtless
is
most moving
of the
modern
Moderner Kunst
art.
In
in
the predominant colour and
symbolism of blood, indicative
it
was
b. d.
1858 1925
in
Tapiau (now Gvardejsk),
in
Zandvoort
this
is
a scandal
exhibited.
stated, "But this all,
Christ.
more
is
One
critic
not Christ at
like
an apeman
with a black woolly beard, pro-
mouth area
truding crude
less technically, snout), flattened
pug nose, huge
orbital
(or put
bulges and
devious black eyes. The body lacerated, tortured, blood and more blood wherever the eye turns. The sun, too, bloody.
The
picture
is
one single orgy
is
bloody,
The composition, which brings the motif up like
a cinematic close-up,
is
rays look
its
eyes
to the viewer's
and divorces colour
alienates, abstracts
it
partially
and
dis-
from objective represen-
such that its impasto substance seems to take on a life of its own and cover the picture field as with blood spatters. The heavenly cosmos sheds garish accents on the brutality of the nearly faceless henchmen in the foreground and the helplessness of Mary and St. tation,
if
John the Evangelist
in
the background. The paint surface
is
ploughed
by vehement brushstrokes and swaths of the palette-knife. The figure
murderous
bestiality
and reduced
creature, takes on exemplary
meaning
for the increasing loss of hu-
of Christ, victim of
man that
dignity.
The
to a slaughtered
Crucifixion serves as a paradigm for the statement
man has become
a wolf to man.
To this day art historians continue to have their difficulties with Corinth, especially with his
34
work
after
1
9
1
1
.
He
realistic styles 1
669). From
he moved to
is
very difficult to cat-
1
- and even more by the
89
1
,
when he
resided
in
art of
in
painting located
Impressionism. His aptitudes
From then on he had
to
in
all
1
900, when
the stops of a the-
midway between naturalism and
seemed anything
At the apex of his career,
Rembrandt (1606-
Munich, and after
Berlin, Corinth pulled out virtually
atrical, illusionistic
191
but avant-garde.
Corinth suffered a stroke.
1,
cope with extreme pressures, was tormented
by deep bouts of depression, but also went through happy phases of
among
a creative intoxication, as his famous Walchensee landscapes,
other works, attest. His approach turned radical, broke with academic conventions, unsettled visual habits.
As Corinth himself once
wrote,
"Bad drawing and missing the mark are excused as soon as appear-
ances are captured artist's late style
in
their character."
by considering
it
Most justice can be done
to the
phenomenon
to Ex-
a sort of
parallel
pressionism, even though Corinth never maintained contacts either with
a combination of various elements from
Cornith's earlier Crucifixion scenes. Yet torts the details
and
of bloodlust."
academies
Konigsberg, Munich and Paris, he was impressed primarily by various
1922, the painting
in
immediately caused
when
its
bears the
it
The Red
title
Finished
all
accordance with
egorize. During an extremely long training period, at the
members
of the
the occasion of the
Brucke or the Blauer
22nd
Berlin
Reiter. Yet at
Secession Exhibition
in
any 191
rate, 1,
on
he did
describe paintings by French Cubists and Fauvists as expressionistic,
and recommended them on account of
to the public as highly interesting, precisely
their "wildness".
35
OTTO DIX
1914-15
as a soldier
self-portrait on paper, 68 x 53.5 cm
Oil
Stuttgart, Galerie
der Stadt Stuttgart
War was the nant theme
in
evitable part of
of Decorative Arts.
that
1969
in
Singen
terrible
succeeded
it
trenches and of that
nevertheless.
seen men beings
...
I
I
I
had
There
is
lives,
to experience the
stationed
Dix lay in
in
in
to
torso the head,
course
fix
at
it
any
cost.
You have
to
have
know something about human worst aspects of life myself - that's to
work
I
volunteered." that illustrates this existential artist
depicts al-
explode the small format. From the diagonally rotated in
aggressive red, protrudes
like
a battering ram and
the viewer with a provoking stare - and the viewer
own physiognomy. The
neck and fleshy mouth
ergetic brushstrokes
36
survived. "The
was
of
originally the artist himself, looking at himself in the mirror to
study his bull
August
In
close-up, presents his physique with an immediacy that
most seems
turns to
trench
something enormous
premise better than Dix's Sell-Portrait as a Soldier. The himself
in
the Russian
Flanders.
December. He had
and also why
hardly another
the battles
in
then participated
later wrote, "but
unleashed state
into the war,
Class, fought
the neck, yet shortly thereafter took in
in
brutal, bald soldier with
recalls a
blue, red
in
is
an
in-
Nietzsche.
Beckmann, he took the Bible and Nietzsche's Gay Science along
During intervals
in
the fighting, Dix amazingly executed almost
600 drawings and gouaches between 1915 and 1918. These comprise his actual Expressionist oeuvre. Nearly
all
of
them are covered
with a network of intersecting, agitated lines interlocking at sharp an-
colours often strangely recall the hovering notes of the Blauer Reiter,
wouldn't have missed
in this
why went
he
could have read
soldier.
non-commissioned
to
received the Iron Cross
November 1917
in
this Dix
and death
promoted officer,
was discharged
horrible thing,"
in
lost
-
life,
gles, vectors
1918 was
was wounded
Dix
pilot training.
war was a
February
in
year he
In
men
fascination
for
with him to the front.
autumn
that winter,
its
and foremost a struggle
November he was
2nd
northern France.
in
Like
life is first
their lives. In
on the Somme, which cost 470,000 warfare
West-
to the
Champagne, France,
in
which nearly 600,000
d.
In
and the trench warfare
battle
Untermhaus (near Gera),
a keen expectation of the "enormous" things awaiting the
den School
went through the
in
for
Human
1915 he was sent
1891
face around the face, a formal equivalent for mental torment yet also
Dix after his training at the Dres-
ern Front
b.
domi-
first
the work of Otto
wounded
bony
skull,
wild animal at bay. En-
and yellow-orange plough the sur-
oddly ethereal
of force that
in
combine
an ecstatic rhythm. The
into
view of the dissonant overall structures out of which
Cubo-Futuristic, expressively delineated and distorted objects and
landscapes emerge. Simultaneity congeals is
a far cry from a depiction of
end
into
visible reality.
did Dix begin to capture his experiences
ner. In
1923-24 he produced
a cycle of
in
fifty
War, a twentieth-century counterpart to Goya's ters of
War (18 10- 1820) and almost
a "creative chaos" that
Only long after the war's a more
realistic
man-
etchings entitled The
(1746-1828) Disas-
certainly inspired by them.
37
OTTO DIX
1920
prager strasse Oil
on canvas with
x 81 cm
collage elements, 101
Stuttgart, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart
to Dresden in 1919 - now as Academy - probed new ways to react to
The Dix who returned student at the Art
whose the
brutality
and hypocrisy had become evident
in
the trenches of
World War. His Expressionist vocabulary was
First
mented by the montage
Dada and
principle of
shocking provocation, before Verism with
its
its
a master a society
first
method
supple-
of sarcastic,
hyperreal attention to de-
completely replaced the revolutionary formal pathos of Expres-
tail
sionism
Dix's
in
the
in
artist's
eye.
manifested
life
He was
itself
in
terms of ex-
intrigued by outsiders, including in-
was working
tellectuals
and
prostitutes
and disabled war veterans who now populated
ings and prints.
human
artist
colleagues, but above
He focused
all
it
people,
Dix's paint-
mercilessly on the transitory nature of the
body, and created icons of sexual ugliness.
The
factors of ex-
political attitude,
whose message they focused
of actual slices of the reality
supplemented by
principles, that
is,
in
or another,
the
artist's
city
in
Dix's
postwar work. His
- likewise played a key
role
continuing mergers of disparate elements into a "cre-
ative chaos".
Prager Strasse, from which
scene,
it
vas with
metamorphoses
into
disablement
left
of the cart
my
Dadaist
contemporaries" centres on
of the
many
at that time
tinfoil.
whose
but begging to survive.
alternative
on which the legless man pushes
the pavement are formed of in
painting with collage takes
a boulevard of disillusionment. The can-
war veterans, two
them no
oil
street. In Dix's starkly
inscription "Dedicated to
its
bizarrely alienated
wheels
this
was Dresden's most opulent
its title,
The photos, paper,
the upper part of the macabre shop
window
his torso
hair
and
The
along
tickets
displaying disjointed
stereotype body parts - torsos, limbs - are likewise pasted on. Bet-
ween
the light-coloured prostheses
inserted a photo of his left
own
face.
in
the right-hand
The newspaper
window Dix has
clipping
in
the lower
corner - the compositional extension of a barking dachshund's
mouth -
is
another authentic piece of
reality that reflects
the growing
anti-Semitism of the postwar years: "Jews Out!" screams the headline.
exile
in
imagery composed
of typically Expressionist origin. With the aid of this
combinations Dix shed a glaring
social injustices that characterized the
he drew attention to the
embodied
in
When
political
light in
Prager Strasse on the
young Weimar Republic, and
perversions that would soon
become
tyranny. Hitler
saw
a shame
paintings by Dix
in
Dresden
in
1937, he debars."
By
this
time Dix had long turned away from Expressionism, having
in
the
clared,
"It's
one cannot put these people behind
especially Verism.
one form
Swiss
mal structures, garish colours, and an aesthetic of the ugly - formal
ism were retained,
in
in
unreal, overlapping perspectives, disintegrated for-
1920s adopted the sharp-focus
main themes - war and the big
together
around them. This collage device was
aggeration, distortion and grotesqueness so important to Expression-
earlier
who had come
1916, the Berlin Dadaists had a clear and definitely left-leaning
art of
art.
Yet even after the war,
tremes
Unlike the Zurich Dadaists in
objectivity of
Neue
Sachlichkeit and
39
LYONEL FEININGER
1930
Market church
in Halle
Oil on canvas, 102 x 80.4 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne - Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst
work
Feininger's
more
The American-born gra-
Klee's.
who was
phic artist and painter, also
almost
is
categorize than
difficult to
and
musician
talented
a
composer, was associated with various of the
German Expres-
groups without
sionist
longing
them.
to
In
be-
truly
1912 he
in
Halle to paint a series of city views. Like other examples from this
series, the
reflects not only an adoption of the Orphist colour
but an
Brucke,
b.
1871
in
d.
1956
in
"First
New New
York,
Paris,
by
way
Berlin,
in
and the following year exhibited
York
German Autumn
Heckel
especially
and Schmidt-Rottluff,
with Salon".
He
the
Blauer
arrived at his typical style in
of a confrontation with Cubism. With
translated his favourite motifs
seascapes, sailing ships -
into
Reiter
- Gothic church
its
the
in 1
9
1
1
,
in
aid Feininger
spires, cityscapes,
compositions of crystalline purity and
timelessness that anticipated the Expressionist architectural fantasies of the
Glass Chain (see
p.
22). This
is
the context
in
which
his
wood-
cut for the founding manifesto of the Bauhaus, Cathedral of Socialism,
belongs
like,
elongated human figures which were subsequently abandoned.
Until
(fig.
1
9 9 1
to
of his pictures
were populated by marionette-
Feininger employed an exaggerated perspective to engender a pictorial
tectonics consisting of a synthesis of cubic, prismatically refracted, units. His early Promenades were probably known to who may well have adapted them in his Potsdamer Platz 57). On the other hand, Feininger paid homage to Kirchner's
energy-charged Kirchner, (ill.
p.
paintings of Berlin cocottes
As Market Church
in
in
his Birds
of the Night,
1
921
Halle shows, by this time Feininger's
facetting had achieved a rigorous tectonics ity.
1
925,
later in
constructive principle
As a
Reiter.
Klee
in
1
result,
924
to
Dessau
was
to
Between 1929 and 1931, on the
and
intrinsic
invitation of
Alois W. Schardt, the artist spent several periods of
monumental-
museum months
director
at
a time
of colour that
system
Delaunay
of
Constructivism, which
international
1
first
in
paralleled
Weimar from
932. At the Bauhaus, the
allied with
Expressionist ideals a
rational,
Blauer
la
Feininger joined with Jawlensky, Kandinsky and
form a successor to the Munich group, The Blue Four.
Feininger has depicted the Market Church
tage point that relegates
its
Halle from a van-
in
and
characteristic spired facade
flying
buttresses to the background, and brings the massive late-Gothic
nave diagonally
into the
foreground and to the
left
edge,
glomerate of vectors and dynamic prisms. The complex
subdued translucent colours
of luminous
reduced structure shot through with fractions
and
clarity,
lines,
is
like
a con-
rendered
in
forming a Cubistically
rays and facets.
vibrations, interpenetrations, overlappings
In
the re-
and mirror-
ings of forms, the synaesthesia of painting, architecture and music
has achieved an overwhelming polyphonic space. "Where
the
artist,
I
used
to strive for
who emigrated
effect, as of light-pervaded
movement and
to the U.S.
in
even the surrounding reality."
air.
restlessness," said
1936, of such pictures,
attempt to sense and express the complete
25).
1913 many
with
affinity
Feininger's teaching activity at the Bauhaus,
maintained friendly relations with the
Munich painting has a subtle transparency
total
'The world' that has
"I
now
calm of objects, and
moved
farthest from
41
GEORGE GROSZ
1917-18
Dedicated to oskar panizza Oil
on
canvas, 140
x 110 cm
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Even more than
turned his art to
although not
in
he joined
the sense of supline,
1918. During
in
1959
In
and soon those of the
months
well.
Like every
Germany who
developments
become
was soon added.
One
of Grosz's
for
war
In
in art.
service, but by
unfit for duty. military, to
These
which a
January 1917 he was
most
striking
the motifs but
in
is
milling
crowd
p.
faces, everyone
In
have
lost
all
He
also pointed out
its
completely engulfed
is
A
around
perched, not only
is
highly decorated old
is
a modern
mills, their
in
It
recalls the
the sets of Expresstreet
who
is filled
intersect
with a
and over-
sense
of direction.
Dance
The neon
sign over the build-
"DANCING TONIGHT",
of Death.
faces reflecting alcohol,
protest against a humanity that had In his later
realism of
As Grosz himself
Neue
syphilis,
gone
says
it
all
explained,
"In
a
plague
work Grosz proceeded from Dadaism
that a "humanity
to the
sober
critical
impact.
gone insane" soon caught up
So
with
933 Grosz became one of the first victims of Nazi persecuarts. He emigrated to the United States, where he received
American citizenship Berlin,
painted this
I
Sachlichkeit and a sociocritical Verism, jettisoning Ex-
was no accident 1
...
insane."
pressionist formulae but retaining their satirical and
the
is
instinct.
strange street by night, a hellish procession of dehumanized figures
in
The seemingly endless
to
demonstrates the herd
him -
theme
the tumult of pushing, jostling people with masklike
seems
this
it
the incandescent reds of the palette and the vio-
21).
left,
tion in
of Cubistically simplified figures
one another.
42
joint for him.
infused with a compelling dynamism.
sionist films (see
church
milling
sword as a moon-faced clergyman pathet-
ing entrance next to the coffin,
Dedicated
this
vertiginous spaces and toppling housefronts
lap
The last-named
energies that stream through the composition. Even the solid
architecture
the
of the painting inheres not only
works on
in
lent
city.
a world gone out of
Oskar Panizza. The aggressiveness
tiny
by nightclubs and bars and office buildings.
to a mental hospital. During the
to
an urban jungle where a
in
mob
holds the cross on high and a sheep-faced office employee, on
shows, crime and murder, war and the big
would become a synonym
source,
which ended
similarly "political" funeral
But Grosz's wildly gesticulating
ically
war years Grosz concerned himself with the subjects of circus and variety
fight.
attacks on Church and State
himself with the avant-garde,
reinducted, but only a day later he had to be sent to an infirmary, and a
few weeks afterwards was admitted
a bloody
satirical
short time earlier, the Italian Futurist Carlo Carra
(1881-1966) had depicted a in
in-
officer brandishes his
war and the
fuelled Grosz's hatred of
disgust with war profiteers
A
scene was
army
hesistantly registered for
the time six months had passed, he had six
and physician whose
writer
ist
appealed to Grosz.
big-city
Oskar Panizza (1853-1921), an Expression-
to
al-
artist in
familiar with progressive international
November 1914 he
between Dadaism and Expressionism. This
served him as an excuse to evoke urban chaos.
lied
Grosz was
line
tended as a homage
the activities of the Brucke with
young
in Berlin
his
Academy
form an overwrought boiling human mass that occupies the border-
the coffin on which a schnapps-drinking Death
Blauer Reiter as in Berlin, d.
whom
to
from 1909 onwards, he followed
interest,
1893
including
Communists,
studies at the Dresden
b.
ends -
political
port for any party that of the
Grosz mixes Futurism and Cubism with a shot of James Ensor
his future
Otto Dix, George Grosz
friend,
in
1
938. After the war Grosz planned
and died there during a
visit in
1
959.
to return to
43
ERICH HECKEL
1910
pechstein Asleep Oil
on
x 74 cm Buchheim Museum
canvas, 110
Bernried,
Erich Heckel
strongly
to
melancholy
Brucke
tended more
and
sentimentality
artist. In
view of the
dominated
that
idyllic
fallen
Dresden
to
come
b.
1883
in
Hemmenhofen
in
Dobeln (Saxony),
d.
1970
(Lake Constance)
paintings and prints
-
his
1911
in
the
pavements of
work,
his
move
group's
hectic
the
from big-city
And as
if
gird-
asleep
small
1910
Dresden.
Now the
previous
Italian
motifs
after
that
planes suffused with
journey
and the palette shifted from powerful
to subtle, earthy tones. Tragic figures
full
of
unsullied natural
in
of a I
ings,
ism,
of the
of his early period, the present painting of
canvas
this
is
Max
associated with the
modern connoisseur.
prints at
house dedicated
an early date.
principally to
which after 1945, when the
art
with abstraction, again threatened to
In
1951 he founded a pub-
promoting German Expressionbusiness concerned fall
into discredit. In
itself 1
solely
956 Buch-
heim published a standard work on the Brucke, followed two years later
by a book on the Blauer Reiter.
It
was
also he
who
rediscovered
Heckel's portrait of Pechstein.
At an auction Buchheim acquired a not particularly exciting
Heckel painting
of
1920-21
that depicted rather
wooden-looking
light.
after the
is
rendered
in
ex-
power and grandeur. On an
1909 Heckel had been confronted with the monu(c. 1267-1337) and the Trecento, as well as
in
with the iconic dignity of Etruscan sculpture, and these
art,
his work. In his
left their
Pechstein portrait Heckel also avoided the
of colour that
had previously dominated much
of
now became
un-
Brucke
A
means, a tectonic composition, and
expression continued to play a key
mark
wild,
despite the intense red that determines the overall effect.
eral disciplining of painterly
genstrik-
Heckel's prime aims. Emotional
role,
but combined with well-con-
sidered, rationally controlled form. Heckel also addressed the problem of spatial
depth
in this
period,
and attempted
geometric reduction and overlapping
othar-Gunther Buchheim began to collect Expressionist paint-
drawings and
lishing
one
in
mental rigour of Giotto
ing figurative formulae
short time before the move, Heckel produced
intrinsic
Dangast
the following storm-and-
his
surroundings.
name
in
pansive
woodcuts are among the best that Expres-
Pechstein asleep. The history of
came back to
impressions, he held fast to
date. Yet the tenor of Heckel's
in
1
no longer as furious as immediately
new
flat
9
1
held at Galerie Arnold,
stress period, to 1909. Instead, the frontal figure
melancholy supplanted carefree people depicted
works
finally
in
They knew only the
which was reproduced
show
founding year of the Brucke, 1905, and
tamed orgies
beautiful
is
lost.
ing himself against the rush of
heavier, the contours harsher,
most
this composition,
sensational picture
The brushwork
portrait of his artist friend,
which he had finished
the catalogue of the Brucke
in
on
A
chair,
woodcut based on
sionism ever produced - nonetheless altered. The brushstrokes grew
complementary colours
a long
in
and which the experts had long considered
must have
Berlin
as a shock.
canvas must contain a masterpiece of Expressionism, concealed
under a thick layer of white paint - Heckel's
landscapes and human images
he knew the back of the
to earlier research,
other
any
than
nudes on a beach. Thanks
to solve
pictorial planes.
it
by
means
of
45
ERICH HECKEL
1913
Glass Day Oil on canvas, 120 x 96 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne - Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst
1910 and 1911, when Heckel spent
In
summer months
relaxing
and productive
Lakes
with Kirchner and Pechstein at the Moritzburg
outside Dresden, pictures of bathers, usually female nudes done on
a few years
The
fields of saturated colour
were bounded by black contours,
mood
the figures simplified and cursorily reduced, the prevailing
care-
this
"The Glass Chain" (see
When war ical
corps and
broke out
was
With the aid of
art historian
painting despite his duties.
man and
old Europe,
Not so much
period.
and in
that characterized
life,
Brucke
terms of formal approach as
in
art at that
terms of
this
fundamental mood, such Expressionist compositions can be compared to Paul Cezanne's Bathers, since these,
too,
aimed
at giving
form to a vision of an earthly paradise of balance and harmony. The
Cezanne
great
Cassirer
exhibition held
Berlin
in
in
November 1909
at Galerie
gave the Brucke painters an opportunity
Paul
to thor-
oughly study his painting.
female nude
approach
ence
in
insights.
Although the
the subsequent works changed decisively under the influ-
Cubism and Futurism, but
of
new
the studio or outdoors remained his central theme, his
in
especially after a confrontation with
the art of Robert Delaunay. Heckel's theoretical involvement with the
Frenchman's work was prompted by Macke, Marc and Feininger,
whom
visited
Heckel
summing-up
ful
The but
Berlin
in
1912. The Glass Day was
his
all
of
master-
of this innovative experience.
painting
thinned
in
in
oils.
is
no longer executed
in
the earlier heavy impasto
Heckel's formerly decorative curving
line is
sup-
planted by angular strokes and facetting which transform the motif of a
nude
figure bathing
urations. trate
in
a bay into a play of interlocking crystalline
The all-pervading
lucid blue of
even the woman's body
line in
in
the foreground and the steep coastbrilliant light,
robs things of material mass; the colour range conveys an glassy, quasi spiritualized effect
talline
46
like
fig-
water and sky seems to pene-
the background. The pictorial space, suffused with
which, by the way,
Heckel placed
icy,
frozen,
- as already indicated by the
the composition
itself,
title,
anticipated the crys-
fantasies of an Expressionist architects' group that would form
22).
Perhaps in
it
is
no coin-
1913, after
in
1914, Heckel volunteered for the medOstend, where he met
Max Beckmann.
Walter Kaesbach he was able to continue In
his
view of the ensuing self-destruction of
hopes
in
a league of like-minded
intel-
and grew increasingly intrigued by the circle around the poet Stefan George (1868-1933) - who however deslectuals
and
artists,
pised Heckel's Expressionism. This did not prevent the painter from
making George the key figure
war and
built
in
murals executed
in
1
922-23
at the
where Kaesbach had become director after the up a collection of contemporary art - Feininger, Heckel,
Angermuseum,
Erfurt,
other Expressionists, and
For Heckel, the year 1911 brought
in
stationed
free and reflecting that Romantic yearning for a harmonious unity of nature, art
p.
major work of Heckel's was executed
the Brucke had dissolved.
the spot, were a predominant subject for him as for the other Brucke artists.
later,
cidence that
Bauhaus
artists. In
Heckel's fresco with
its
predominantly male nudes, the earthly paradise of earlier summers
shimmers through.
In
the elongated figures against a background of
forbidding Alpine glaciers, despite the its
new
classicism which has shed
erstwhile Expressionist formal vocabulary, a spiritualization remin-
iscent of Glass
Day remains much
in
evidence.
47
ALEXEI VON JAWLENSKY
1909
the Dancer Alexander sacharoff portrait of on cardboard, 69.5 x 66.5 cm
Oil
Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
1896 Jawlensky came
In
friend of Werefkin
Sarah Bernhardt impressed him so deeply that he decided to become a dancer.
first
the
artist
re-
the
earthy
palette
he
at the
Peters-
St.
Torzhok (near Tver),
d.
1941
in
Wiesbaden
-
art
1
920s and
had
finally
my
with
make-up and costume,
off
this
The
catalyst
Russ-
he soon shook approach.
naturalistic
was a confrontation
with van Gogh,
modern French
self-confidently
that after a stay on the Breton coast near Carantec, he
managed
"to translate
nature into colours
radiant soul." Ecstatic emotion
artist,
tinually
and above in
who,
like
pursued the
The
Kandinsky,
intrinsic
was
in
conformance
conveyed through
colour,
following years brought all
collaborative
esoterically interested
essence and harmony
numerous
and con-
Munich and - from 1912 -
international contacts,
in
in
the
New
Artists Association
in
the Blauer Reiter. Apart from land-
scapes, representations of heads began to play a prime role
in
Jawlensky's oeuvre.
1907 he began
The
way on the
resulting paintings
convey
the impression that the colours have been veritably stretched across
the surface. They are contoured the figures and set them
in
in
heavy black
vibrant motion, as
in
lines that both define
the superb Portrait of
Dancer Alexander Sacharoff. Sacharoff (1886-1963), a close
48
all
Above
five
later
all in
the
continents brought him world
figure
portrait (from the collection of
when
the dancer,
in
him shortly before a performance. And
said to have taken the still-wet picture with him, fearing
is
it
over.
and the made-up face,
The sweepingly rendered area of the androgynous - possibly
lasciviously
Sacharoff was playing a female role - are dominated by the aggres-
echoed
in
costume and mouth, and the black contours
The greenish shadows
the brushstrokes that set the background
staccato that
seems
to reflect the physical
Jawlensky would ty
wig).
later
and expressive mysticism achieved here
stracted faces, less
in
naturalistic,
in
an enigmatic sitter.
of formal sensibili-
soul.
The colours be-
the pictorial structure ever
geometric. The transcendental presence of Byzantine icons to
have been reborn
outbreak of the
First
Germany. They went
in
of figure
the face are
to create increasingly ab-
a sort of stenography of the
and less
in
energy of the
employ the synthesis
more
seemed
a configuration derived from Cubism. After the
World War, Werefkin and Jawlensky had to leave to Switzerland.
Cuno Amiet, a former member
of
the Briicke, went back to the couple's abandoned apartment and
saved the most valuable objects of to concentrate in a very original
effects of colours on a plane surface.
the
Sacharoff
came
of things.
where he would
at a single sitting,
visited
that the artist might paint
and
work with Werefkin, Munter and Kandinsky
Murnau, followed by participation
In
von Derp-Sacharoff)
and coiffure (probably a
1905 Jawlensky
theatre performance by
to Munich,
Reputedly Jawlensky painted the
Kees van Dongen.
In
1904.
fame.
dominating personality
the ordering force of planar composition, remained the key concerns of this
930s, tours through
sive red of the
artist
announced
1
Clotilde
in
to
1904 Sacharoff moved
In
the Nabis, later the Fauves - and subsequently with the
initially
Dutch
Paris from
Academy under llya Repin 844-1 (1 930), who was then the ian painting. Yet
in
in
contribute to the development of eurhythmic dancing.
burg
1864
Academie des
Munich, where they met and be-
had learned
b.
pupil at the
A
friended Kandinsky. At
tained
A^f^
1903
Beaux-Arts
already accomplished
\
and Jawlensky's, was a
with Marianne von Werefkin to
painting.
art there, including
a van
Gogh
49
WASSILY KANDINSKY
Ludwig's church
st. Oil
1908
on cardboard,
67.3
x 96
Munich
in
cm
Madrid, Collection of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, on loan to Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
The
focuses on the
artist
streetside arcades
in
the lower
facade of St Ludwig's, the MuUniversity
nich
which
church,
a
located
is
in
the erst-
neighborhood" of
"artists'
where
Kandinsky
apartment
studio
September
in
1908. Outside the
church portal a crowd of people 1944
d.
in
or participants
abstracted to glowing dots of colour. The
middle arch and the group of priests
some
kind
is
brilliant
a procession,
in
banner under the
yellow copes suggests that a
in
going on.
The way Kandinsky brings the short strokes and
in
an interplay of
light
and dark,
tiny configur-
composed
recalls the folkloristic motifs of the
which he depicted
his
Russian homeland under
the influence of French Post-Impressionism and Pointillism
and 1907.
It
was no coincidence
Spiritual in Art,
essay,
that
Kandinsky referred
in
his
(1863-1935)
to Paul Signac's
whose works Kandinsky had
in
Phalanx group, to which he belonged from 1901
deep and
lasting
the saturated
inspiration
50
1904,
colour
Kandinsky derived
from the Fauves, especially Matisse, during a study
906-07.
in
1905. The
Ludwig's both a flickering atmosphere and
a highly abstract decorativeness. This, with
1
to
contrasted with deep shadows underneath the arches
tones, reflects the
It
began
later recalled,
840-1 926)
He
paintings of
when he
realized,
"Suddenly
I
saw a
painting for the
found embarrassing.
A
painter had no right, Kandinsky believed at the
time, "to paint so unclearly."
missing
in
this picture." Yet
He had still
the sense that "the object
passed
all
my dreams.
Years
later, in
Munter settled again
1908, when Kandinsky and
trip to
Paris
in
me and
power and
Painting took on a fabulous
in
was
he was struck by the "unsuspected
force of the palette, which had previously been hidden to
ian
first time."
admitted to not being able to visually identify the motif, which he
sur-
glory."
his partner Gabriele
Munich and began exploring the Upper Bavar-
landscape around Murnau with Jawlensky and Marianne von
Werefkin, and
when
they
all
joined forces
in
1909
Kandinsky arrived
found the
to
at
New
an approach his
friends called "a synthesis" - a reduction of subject matter to
flat,
coloured forms, rhythmically arranged and anchored by solid contours,
which enabled great detachment from natural appearances and subjective distortion.
From
this
tion in
191
1.
their
point of departure, Kandinsky then
Blauer Reiter group, which separated from the
the tenth exhibition,
St.
(1
took his next, revolutionary step to abstraction,
already given a place of prominence
lends the picture of
one of Monet's
1906
in
D'Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionisme, the most import-
brilliant light
front of
1911 book, On the
ant theoretical statement of that group,
of the
in
Artists Association of Munich,
ations of glittering, gemlike colour into a dazzling texture,
"fairy-tale pictures" in
eye-opening experience. As Kandinsky
he was standing
probably the congregation
mills,
Neuilly-sur-Seine (near Paris)
Catholic celebration of
Munich represent the mid-
colour,
rented
Moscow,
in
and decisive phase of development.
century. St. Ludwig's
Schwabing,
in
literally
first
Haystacks, Impressionist renderings dissolved into strokes of pure
while
1866
with a
Ludwig's Church
St.
dates from the early nineteenth
near Ainmillerstrasse
b.
Pictures like
point of Kandinsky's
in
the context of the
New
Artists Associa-
51
WASSILY KANDINSKY
1914
Klamm
improvisation Oil
on
canvas, 110
x 110
cm
Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
In
the Blauer Reiter years, from 1911 to 1914, Kandinsky un-
pursued the path
erringly
most
tically
phase of
exciting
was perhaps the
to abstraction. This his career,
when
conveyed an impression of "external
(which, he said,
Impressions
his
in
artis-
nature"), Improvi-
sations (impressions of "inner nature") and Compositions, he retained
a
modicum
sic effect.
As Kandinsky words,
ture, in other
of
forms and colours with
of figuration while charging
himself explained
more
I
1914,
in
same
the
"In
intrin-
pic-
or less dissolved the objects, so that not
them could be recognized
at once,
and so that these
all
spiritual over-
tones could be gradually experienced by the viewer, one after the other.
own
And here and
accord, forms,
there even purely abstract forms in
came
in
berate
was
Improvisation Klamm, too, the meanings of objects
like
an undertone
in
Instead,
moods
right,
to a valley 3,
known
1914.
ing the
whole a
of paint
were
jectivity
and
In
sky's
in
left,
In
a
a waterfall. Between these runs a
August Macke
of the
it,
apparently
did.
It
has
makes anything
most diverse kind
jar
let
Bavarian cos-
in
that
justifiably
but an
Kandinsky
alone invoked an
been pointed
idyllic
impression.
against one another, lend-
turbulent, conflicting character
- as
if
the maelstroms
the process of swallowing up the last remnants of ob-
figuration.
keeping with the symbolic language that dominated Kandin-
work
of these years, the suggestion of
man" appears
in
an "apocalyptic horse-
the left-hand section of the picture.
A
frequent fea-
ture of his compositions, this figure stood for the battle against the
dragon
of
worldliness, the avant-garde's battle against
convention, of the spiritual against the superficiality of
52
dawned, he was convinced, an age
hidebound
modern socie-
in
Madame
Blatavsky, which
to mysticism.
A new age
had
which positivism and material-
ism would be overcome, to be replaced by the
-
actually an old ideal which had already
new
ideal of spirituality
been pursued by German
Romantics such as Friedrich and Runge. Kandinsky now set out
to
convey symbolic meanings not only through motifs but through pure lines
and colours,
their contrasts
and harmonies,
their "musiciality"
and
synaesthetic effects.
Seen against like
a paradise
tles
and incursions
lost
this
background, Improvisation
many and key
Klamm
into
uncharted
territory that characterized
dangers that loomed
after completing this
in
role in the
work Kandinsky
left
Ger-
assumed a
development not only of an avant-garde but a
art.
Kandin-
the real world.
returned by devious paths to Russia, where he
revolutionary
looks less
than an attempt to continue those aesthetic bat-
weeks
has simply depicted a country excursion here,
out that the ambience here
tendency
For just four
Munter
one by no means has the impression
earthly paradise, as
his already strong
the largely abstract structure. The painting
footbridge with a couple standing on yet
augmented
period, despite the
as Hollentalklamm, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, on July
And
Kandinsky was greatly influenced by the anthroposo-
sky's Munich
still
the upper area one can detect ladders and ropes, at the lower
tume.
this point
rever-
inspired by an excursion with Gabriele
rowboat, and at the lower
On
phy of Rudolf Steiner and the theosophy of
of their
other words, that had to have a purely painterly
effect." In
ty.
veritably
53
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1910
Artiste (Marcella) Oil
on
Berlin,
x 76 cm
canvas, 100
Briicke-Museum
criticized
Max
Beckmann, was never able
to es-
Kirchner,
cape the influence something
of French
Kirchner
himself
loudly denied throughout his
was
he
Yet
time.
art,
life-
already
in-
trigued with Post-Impressionism
while
still
ture
^^H
neering
«H d.
1880 1938
Brucke
Aschaf fen burg,
in
Frauenkirch (near Davos)
in
Dresden.
in
adapt them to
to
They taught him never
his
into
one
artists,
above
brilliant, flat
own approach
to entirely lose
of the
to
in
Gogh
Henri Ma-
view of
this
colour-fields
and
result, Kirchner's art
most tension-charged
involvement,
it
becomes
should have been primarily interested
aspects of Matisse's tation of the
Brucke
art. In
in
of any twentieth-
clear
why Kirchner
the aesthetic, decorative
the midst of the formal turbulence and agi-
repertoire, of
which he was a pioneer, Kirchner
nevertheless continually concentrated on a stylization of the planar composition, a rational reduction and clarification of visual vocabulary
beyond
all
sheer expressiveness, as seen
From
early
1910, two adolescent
reportedly the daughters of an artiste's
in
Artiste (Marcella).
sisters,
them. The present
portrait,
year-old Marcella,
one
sumed
Marcella and Franzi,
widow who
neighbourhood, began to play an important part
lived in Kirchner's
in
like
had a more than platonic relationship with which probably represents the fifteen-
of Kirchner's
most impressive
characterized by intrinsic monumentality and
ludicity.
paintings.
The
girl
It
is
has as-
a relaxed pose, one leg drawn up, her head resting on her right
hand. The sence
is
pervaded by a relaxed, introverted mood that
derscored by the cat asleep
in
is
un-
the foreground. The apparently so sim-
ple effect of the painting should not deceive us as to the refinement of the composition
and
its
skilled disposition of planes.
arranged on a diagonal, leading from the lower
left to
The motifs are
the upper
the lives of the
limited to
right.
a few intense
rhythm to the composition. The unusual, high vantage
which the figure Kirchner's part. tima,
it
is It
seen diagonally from above, was a
brings the
shows her
turning
point,
brilliant
close to the viewer, yet at the
girl
away as
if
to
from
idea on
same
escape from any voyeuristic
gaze, puts visual and existential distance between model and viewer.
untiring experiments.
century European painter. In
likely
the nude out-
in
the painters' favourite models, and
hues including a dominant green, and closed contours lend a graceful
conscious formal control under
As a
others before them,
is
pose
to their willingness to
became
form Die
the Fauves, or all
Thanks
Smooth, homogeneously opaque colour areas,
Berlin devoted an exciting retro-
the pressure of spontaneous expression.
developed
1908-09
four. In
spective. Kirchner marvelled at Matisse's
began
engi-
artists.
Schmidt-
agitated brushwork of van
young German
Galerie Cassirer
Bleyl,
and Heckel
Rottluff
was the
it
deep impression on the
whom
his
in
he became a
degree,
1905, joined
7,
Now
"savages", electrified the tisse, to
briefly
convert to painting and, on June
in
that left a
Dresden, and
in
Munich. After taking
j b.
a student of architec-
Brucke
doors, the two girls
In
1925
in
Switzerland - where the mentally and physically
shaken Kirchner had the war - he
a farm near Davos
retired to
was confronted by
terful
exercises
make
his
in
original
in
the last year of
works by Picasso. Their mas-
Cubist facetting tempted Kirchner for a time to
own attempts
at rational pictorial composition.
Kirchner's oeuvre as a whole
came
As a
result,
to represent both poles of the Ex-
pressionist potential: an emotionally-charged, gestural art
in
ened colourism and a taming
conscious
control over pictorial
means.
of the expressive through
height-
55
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER
1914
potsdamer Oil
on canvas, 200 x 150 cm Museen zu Berlin -
Berlin, Staatliche
In
moloch of the big plunged
city
Germany had
into the
became one
symphony -
appeared on the scene
into
a dynamic staccato of
scenes with
prostitutes,
too, loved the city
traffic,
was the
National
Potsdamer
city's
Platz, to
in
translating
them
decked out as
in
if
tight corsets.
regular excursions from his
tion. In
as an in
illustrious icon of
German
celebrated
justly
big-city Expressionism.
the background are the red brick walls of
Potsdam Sta-
as police regulations demanded. Behind them hover black-
suited men,
anonymous, faceless. The
shape echoed by the
pavement,
triangle of the
striding legs of the
male
figures,
is
lance between the converging streets towards the round
where the female stage.
figures present themselves as
The combination
of forms, round
sexual connotations. The street
is
flowing the banks
An 16,
in
a cold
between pavement and
earlier opinion of this picture
1916, Franz Servaes wrote
56
if
drunk."
The
on a revolving
was in
light
fact that
one
on wet asphalt, over-
traffic island,
inundating
less favourable.
On
it."
Febru-
the Vossische Zeitung that
human
doing ridiculous hopping movements
that totters as
a
traffic island,
and pointed, possesses clear
Kirchner "presents true monstrosities of limbs,
if
its
thrust like
suffused by a noxious green, which,
as Roland Marz has said, "fans out
ary
in
the foreground stand two streetwalkers of different ages, both
"ladylike",
1,
and from then
soldiers'
widows on
In
on, prostitutes Berlin's streets
in
of the
was
1915 Kirchner volunteered
for military service. After only
months he was temporarily discharged, on condition psychiatric treatment.
a "bloody
carnival",
not finished
were officially required to dress as - strangely patriotic whores!
By
this
to paint. Blurred, then
two
that he enter
time Kirchner had begun to view war as
and wrote, "Now one
is
just like the cocottes
gone the next moment
..."
In
I
used
1917, after at-
before settling
in
a farmhouse near Davos.
figures with distorted
a surrounding space
women
in
Potsdamer
In
Switzerland, his art
developed from renderings of the forbidding Alpine realm mental Expressionist idiom to experiments Picasso.
In
1
in
He
felt
in
a monu-
Cubist form inspired by
937, thirty-two Kirchner works hung
"Entartete Kunst", or Degenerate Art.
The monumental canvas Potsdamer Platz is Gleaming
I,
indicates that the picture
Kirchner tried to escape them by going to a series of sanatoriums
and
nearby studio.
art history
War
veil
1914. That day marked the outbreak of World
the ruffled feathers
best-known streetwalkers' haunt) and around
made
August
tempting to quell attacks of panic with alcohol, morphine and tablets,
bevies along Friedrichstrasse (whose Cafe
which Kirchner
wears a widow's
until after
his
populated
visual levels. Kirchner
of birds of prey, bizarre hats, bright feather boas,
Such cocottes prowled
first
a simultaneity of various impressions
lines,
and events, and interpenetrating street
and rushing
life,
Platz
to terms,
Futurism, which had
Italian
1909. The Futurists,
in
streets, their garish electric lights
of urban
came
which he
in
Now the
themes. Kirchner,
cacophony -
or rather,
other influences, with that of
to Berlin, the
to offer at that period.
of their cardinal
with an unprecedented creative furore
among
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie
1911 the Brucke painters moved from Dresden
only true metropolis that
too,
platz
in
the Nazi exhibition
himself completely mis-
understood, as he had always looked upon himself as a quintessentially
June
German 1
5,
1
artist.
Kirchner relapsed into profound depression.
938, he put a
pistol to his
chest and pulled the
trigger.
On
57
PAUL KLEE
1915
Foehn wind
Marc's
in
Garden, 1915,102 Watercolour on paper, 20 x 15
cm
Munich, Stddtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
The Swiss is
one
personalities
one of
also
artist
Paul Klee
most outstanding
of the
modern
in
and
art
greatest individu-
its
twentieth-century
in
watercolours, paratively few) little
form and content
common
motifs of the pe-
Klee's
riod.
1879
in
Munchenbuchsee
(near Bern), d. 1940
in
stylistic
ence goes hand
Muralto
(near Locarno)
world-renowned
many
lone figures
Due
who
to this creative
briefly
pressionism without being a
added
member
in
independ-
art
autonomy he
an enigmatic is
one
of the
their voices to the choir of
of the
ensemble
or,
his
Ex-
indeed, even
adhering to the score of the performance.
was
Nevertheless, Klee
nection with the Blauer Reiter.
and other
artists of
was
his
the Expressionist vanguard
his breakthrough. His invitation to the 1
9
1
2, to
by his brief con-
acquaintance with Kandinsky in
Munich that brought
Blauer Reiter exhibition of
May
which he submitted seventeen drawings, actually marked the
he adds,
ill,
seriously than
all
art
"All
of this
museums
matter of reforming contemporary
must
in truth
be taken
when
put together
is
it
a
art."
Klee's final breakthrough to the "magic of colour" and stylistic
maturity resulted from impressions gleaned on a
taken (
1
1914
in
880-
1
with
August Macke and the sculptor Louis
962). This journey and
absolute apex
in
its artistic
the history of modern
yield
art.
under-
trip to Tunis,
became
Moilliet
legendary, an
Over the following years
the light-flooded watercolours of this period were paralleled by creasingly
strict,
crystalline abstractions,
encouraged by Klee's
in-
friend
Franz Marc. This longs,
is
the context
one of the most
ter period.
It
in
which Foehn Wind
July 1915,
in
the front. The motif, rendered "musical"
in
is
in
Marc's Garden be-
beautiful watercolours from Klee's Blauer Rei-
was done on the occasion
Benediktbeuren,
see the
lastingly influenced It
much more
hand with a
assurance that lends
brilliant
but irresistible charm.
paintings bear
relation in
to the
b.
oil
His
art.
and (com-
prints
the nursery (don't laugh, reader)." After a reference to the
in
drawings of the mentally
His oeuvre does not con-
alists.
form to any of the many directions
home,
at
the only word for
in it,
of a
visit
to
Marc
when Marc was on a
the midst of dark
firs,
is
abstracted yet
still
and a mountain silhouette
shapes that
metrical
is
interlock
Ried, near
from
an interplay of colours so subtle that
in
We
recognizable.
wall of a freestanding house, the red roof of a
Yet ultimately the landscape
in
brief leave
garden house
the background.
reduced to a pattern of Cubistic geo-
and
partially
overlap each other.
watercolour also represents Klee's reaction to his reading,
in
The
1912, of
Wilhelm Worringer's book Abstraction and Empathy, published
in
beginning of Klee's international career. Prior to that point, between
1908. From that point on Klee strove to take an "elevated vantage
903 and 905, still living in Bern, he had been active as a draughtsman and etcher of allegorical, grotesque subjects in the wake of Sym-
point"
from which he would be able to integrate the
world"
in
1
1
bolism, formally (
1
877-
1
and substantially related
959), with
oped a unique
whom
to the Austrian Alfred
he became friends
linear style
in
191
and oriented himself
1
.
Kubin
Klee, too, devel-
to the
ambiguity and
bizarreness of Romantic literature, such as that of E.T. A. Hoffmann. early
1912 Klee -
like
his leaning to primitivism: art,
of the kind
58
we
In
the majority of the Expressionists - confessed
"Because there are
tend rather to find
in
still
primal beginnings of
the ethnographic
museum
or
formed
into
a universal image. Although
with the visions of Expressionism, soon, art
"horror-filled
a universal context - as here, where Marc's garden
would burgeon
into a universe in
its
this reflects points of in
his
own
Bauhaus
right.
is
trans-
contact
period, Klee's
Aqif 40 iU 59
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA
1910
Herwarth walden
portrait of on canvas, 100 x 69.3 cm
Oil
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Oskar Kokoschka began his
career as a commercial
Wiener Werkstatte, the
tor the
renowned
crafts
workshop
enna, while he was at the
artist
still
in
Vi-
a student
Vienna School of Decora-
tive Arts.
His painting
inated by Art
soon began
style,
Nouveau
to
show
Expressionism, such
dom-
well as a
d.
1886 1980
in
Pochlarn (Danube),
in
Villeneuve (Lake Geneva)
the young
artist's
and gouaches mediately Yet there
of
were
young nude
others, like
Between
1
thin oils, applied
penetration.
ical
features of as
bizarre
girls
Gustav
like
The following
Klimt,
there
who recognized
emerged a
series of portraits
in
these portraits Kokoschka stripped the mask of
human image. The
facial features in-
cised or scratched off with a brush handle or fine needle. These por-
full
of
accompanied by
similarly structured illustrations
and lithographs
nervous lineatures and physical distortions, amount to a laying
bare of the
sitter's soul.
Their intense Expressionist attack
bined with a refinement of brushwork that also
is commakes them master-
pieces of a highly cultivated aesthetic.
Kokoschka's Expressionism, as was "covert
Baroque
fuses his
art,
traits".
and distinguishes
contemporaries. This
>,',
is
later often
noted, bears
Something ecstatic and visionary indeed
why
it
from that of most of
his portraits,
in
his
particular, are
suf-
Viennese
among
the
blurring
atmosphere
of the
Especially
in
fin
de
morbidity that
and
in
whose
Murderer,
over the faces of
traits.
whom
Even the half-figure porhe met
in
Berlin
Der Sturm, he immediately published
in
his
1910 drama
of Women, appears to reflect an overstrung mind,
hypersensitivity, or
perhaps merely restlessness. Although the of the to
appearances had been abandoned tion of
lies
siecle.
Herwarth Walden,
journal,
Hope
in
the early portraits, Kokoschka's analytic eye fo-
cused on neurotic or even pathological trayal of his patron
if
"X-ray eyes" and psychoanalytical
inward forces. As
in
in
main aims of
lie
if
facial
it
its
is
re-
actual
Walden, Kokoschka prepermitted him to under-
expressions with gestures of
the hands, which are usually disproportionately large. The space picture, diffuse despite
reality
favour of a spontaneous evoca-
his portrait of
score the nervous tension of the
portraiture,
over the features, as
ferred the half-figure portrait type, since
his genius.
The nervous
a compelling analysis of the intellectu-
seems
appear furrowed, the complexion flecked with various hues and
traits,
al
to
tained, a veil of irrationality
watercolour washes, and agitated lines
centuries of convention from the
amount
the people depicted,
accompanied by drawings
scratched with the brush handle into the wet paint, which established his early reputation. In
Kokoschka with having acumen combined with a certain credited
one
that touched off a scandal and im-
art.
subconscious mind - some have
sitter's
of the sitter's appearance,
the enfant terrible of the Vienna scene.
908 and 1912 almost
to psycholog-
of Expressionist
Vienna "Kunstschau",
year, at the
tapestry designs were
made Kokoschka
tendency
an attempt to plumb the
influence,
idiosyncrasies and distortions, as
b.
most compelling examples
of contours, the violent traces scratched into the paint surface, as
in
the
uniform tone, can be seen as an equivalent
to the sitter's state of mind.
61
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA
1913-14
The Tempest on canvas, 181 x 220 cm Kunstmuseum
Oil
Basel,
move
After his
to Berlin
1909 and
in
Herwarth
his activity for
Walden's journal, Der Sturm, Kokoschka gradually abandoned the thin paint application
seen
in
Walden.
his portrait of
thicker colours, an impasto applied
the painting surface up into low
relief.
This
after
Mahler,
widow
of the
woman
precipitated
in
painting,
now
and stormy
1914,
in
Georg
lines:
"Over blackish
cliffs
spot: "The Night".
It
a key
to
tell
the
(1887-1914), an
come
to visit him
saw the yet-unfinished composition,
compose a poem on the
is
also the most fa-
is
Trakl
Austrian poet with Expressionist leanings, had
to
it
Kokoschka used
love.
following anecdote about the picture.
Trakl
it
his
in
inspired him
included the following
/ Plunges death-drunken /
The incandes-
cent bride of the wind." Trakl pointed at the picture with a pale hand,
Kokoschka went on
and
to relate,
"Bride of the Wind", but generally
German
In
titled
known
folklore the term
it
Die Windsbraut
the mercy of the Wild Hunter.
Mahler
An
Windsbraut connoted the Wild girls
and put them
on a
shell-like
at
interpretation of this kind accords
Kokoschka's painting, which shows him and
drifting
(literally
English as The Tempest).
in
Hunt, a stormy whirlwind that abducted young
well with
his lover
Alma
wreck through a "universal ocean" -
confession of a love that was already threatening to descend into a battle
between the sexes and founder on
it.
This
message
is
conveyed
by the contradictory attitudes of the two figures. Next to Alma,
has
fallen into a
deep and
empty space - a complicated
a universal
human - as
parable. if
in
The
62
-
relationship put
anticipation of Action Painting
flung out into an unreal
in
terms of
restless traces that plow through the
abbreviations for intense emotions. ations
who
trusting sleep, lies a restless, brooding Oskar,
staring into
paint congeal
it
meant
The forms -
space are
-
into signs
and
or better, deform-
just as "overwrought" as the
ideal of
in
a
In
1
Alma
91
agitated.
lifelike doll
Kokoschka was years.
with in
4.
Mahler, from which
On
in
1919 he
A
shed
in
his paintings
despairing attempt to find a surrogate light
on the overwrought nervous state
at the time. This
obsession was to pursue him for
received a professorship at the Dresden Art Acad-
Two years
later
he launched
These brought
relief
from
emy.
Kokoschka never
the outbreak of war he volunteered
The expressive impasto brushwork
for the cavalry.
muse
if
self-annihilation.
grew ever more
the Basel Kunstmuseum,
in
Kokoschka's oeuvre. Finished to his great
a series of por-
in
prints.
All of this
typical Expressionist aim, to confront
Kraus termed bourgeois "sexual hypocrisy" with the
The break-up
work
When
Karl
an otherwise subdued colouration.
a liberated sexuality that would not hesitate to go to extremes even
recovered, occurred
and numerous other paintings, drawings and
studio.
what
in
do justice to a
to
Alma
Vienna, met
in
traits
mous witness
built
works together
composer Gustav Mahler. The ensuing passion-
ate relationship with this lovely
The present
employ
to
manner grew ever more
1912, when Kokoschka, back
marked
He began
energetic brushstrokes that
in
spotlighted passages
his
into his
superb series of cityscapes.
personal problems
- and from Expres-
sionism, which was now replaced by visual impressions conveyed impressionistic terms.
in
63
WILHELM LEHMBRUCK
1915-16
The Fallen Man Bronze, 78 x 239 x 83 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne - Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst
When we wood
stand
before
sculptures carved by Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner
(fig.
6) or Karl
trouble
in
among
sionists approach
the disastrous period
of
their blocky
configuration, it
was
re-
when many authors
models. Yet Meiderich (near
Duisburg), d. 1919
man ly
Berlin
in
Expressionism,
this
Lehmbruck
call
Wilhelm
most
significant sculptor of Ger-
the
faces the viewer of his so different and fine-
articulated figures with certain difficulties.
miner and
his wife.
Despite
difficult
of eight children of a
he became a master student
where he studied
for five years,
9
he moved with
In
he
the outbreak of war
lived until
1
1
his wife
in
able to at-
1899.
to
trips to Italy,
and
Holland
child to Paris,
of the Cubists,
where
some
of
into
whom
medical
a Berlin hospital. During the war years he produced only a
few sculptures, including The Fallen Man, 1916, which might be con-
who fell 8 and November 30 of
Langemarck
sidered a symbol of the generation
at
Between October
that year,
teers lost their
phoria
felt
1
lives,
by so
little
in
45,000 volun-
many
Expressionists.
figure with
its
almost Gothic silhouette has very
surface texture, and the facial features are not pronouru od.
remains
is
drama
1914.
a slaughter that put an abrupt end to the war eu-
The elongated
of expression.
Due
acquaintances and
The man, ished yet.
and
still
What
to the existential experiences of
in
He
Amedeo
Matisse,
(1861-1944), Alexander
Maillol
inspirers,
formulated his protest against
terms of a symbolic, melancholy, introverted
fallen, despairing,
all
fours. Yet
he
view of the original
In
between
recalls a bridge
title,
Dying Warrior, the
life
and death - a moving
war memorials. The
interior
space, and
figure's
reply to
all
con-
elongated slender limbs
embody Lehmbruck's
credo, "Sculpture
the essence of things, the essence of nature, that which
ally
not fin-
is
figure with torso extended horizontally over the long base
ventionally heroic
is
crawls on
supports himself on knees, lower arms and head,
still
grips his sword.
weakened
is
perpetu-
human." Kirchner and Lehmbruck
In
Dusseldorf Academy,
1915 Lehmbruck was conscripted
his friends. In
service
1895
1914, remaining largely uninflu-
in
enced by the formal breakthroughs
were
at the
punctuated by
and England.
was
circumstances, he
tend the Dusseldorf School of Decorative Art from
1901
his
enclose an
Lehmbruck was born near Duisburg, one
dissertation Abstrac-
formal language.
inspired
by exotic or medieval European
1908
his
Archipenko (1887-1964) and Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)
seeing a fundamentally Expresin
in
and Empathy. Lehmbruck, who counted Henri
Modigliani, the sculptors Aristide
we have no
of the Expressionists, lost their
the "exalted man" of the type Nietzsche had described and
Wilhelm Worringer had advocated
tures of Kathe Kollwitz or Ernst
gardless whether
in
and most
artists,
tion
angularity
1880
faith in
many
Schmidt-Rottluff, view the sculp-
Barlach,
b.
the Great War,
latest
tacts
and
lived not far
were apparently not
painter
knew each
from each other close, there
knew and appreciated
in is
originals by
other from
1912
Though
Berlin.
at the
their
con-
evidence that the Brucke
Lehmbruck. So beyond a
general Expressionist philosophy, the two probably shared interests,
such as dance, which played an eminently important role artists' stylization
process. Such
similarities led to parallels
in
in
both
their in-
tentions and approaches for a brief period.
Lehmbruck was discharged from the army a hearing impairment. depression, and
in
1
In
1
9 7 he began 1
9 9 he put an end 1
to suffer
to his
life.
in
1916 because
of
from bouts of deep
65
AUGUST MACKE
1913
Lady Oil
on
cm
44 x 43.5
canvas,
Cologne,
a Green jacket
in
Museum Ludwig
August Macke, one
most
of
artists
German
regarded
highly
classical
of the
modernism,
was a wanderer between two worlds. Although his evitably
topic
d.
Meschede
in
Perthes-les-Murlus
(Sauerland),
(Champagne)
comes
Expressionism
excess was not
In
was
primitivism
the
of
loved,
the
kind
nor the
was
stroll
Macke
- and above
approach
all,
to
nature,
Macke's
he was befriended from
New
And although
Artists Association of
Blauer Reiter Almanach in
in
191
he
1,
by Kandinsky, or even by
Schoenberg. This may explain why after moving to Bonn
in
1911,
he never trod the path to abstraction, apart from a few experiments
in
watercolour and drawing. frontier
he explored with great suc-
between French and German
German. And he began
his studies at the
his
and
to Hilterfingen
on Lake Thun.
axis,
she
is
not only slightly shifted
title is
faceless -
i.e.,
exemplary,
like all
Macke's figures of that period. Her gracefully elongated figure
and
to her left
panorama
manner
right,
of
and houses
George Braque. The
branching
recalls
in
the early-Cubist
in
greenish-yellow,
a compositional device perhaps taken
The whole
is
Vinci, in
which Macke immersed
suffused by an enchantment that
Romantic paintings by Caspar David
Macke shared a penchant
in
light-flooded foliage of the trees
from the writings of Leonardo da himself at that period.
and behind them a
wall,
simplified
form a roof accented
at the top to
is
the background; a couple
walking towards a
with river valley
grows together
in
for figures
with
Friedrich,
whom
seen from the back. Spatial
values are coordinated with principles of planar order and brought into
a fine-tuned equilibrium. Compositional rhythm
is
established by pris-
matically broken hues, transparent, vibrating colour contrasts which
themselves seem
1914
with
to
be the source of
Klee and Louis
Moilliet
light.
When Macke
(1880-1962) on
set out their
in
now-
legendary Tunis journey, he had already long developed that sense of
was another new
to
Dusseldorf
do so
at
art
an early date. Already between
Academy and
a brief
colour which Klee hoped he would find
When World War
painting. Like
no other Expressionist, Macke translated the language of French into
compositional balance. The lady of the out of the central vertical
their limbs regularly
to the
moved
his family
each
close contacts with the
cess, the frontier that ran
he and
ugliness with which the Expres-
sceptical of the mysticism indulged
Yet there
after
flanked by four smaller figures, farther
whom
oils
a Green Jacket, painted on a well-nigh square format, exudes
lixmuller or Grosz, nor the brutal
lyrical
was
confirmed by one of Macke's major works, one of the
of
of Marc, with
Munich and contributed
in
is
sociocritical subjects of Dix, Fe-
impelled by the vision of an earthly paradise.
Macke maintained
done
Lady
1910. Yet he did not share Marc's pantheism despite the fact that he, too,
This first
fashions.
terms of palette and
all
1912, with Delaunay, which soon led to
in
of light as their point of departure.
his
explosive forms, garish colours
cafes and shop windows, people on an evening
works resemble those
contact, beginning
always based on impressions of nature, and always taking the effects
of
is
preferred to depict civilized urban scenes, well-kept streets and parks,
women's
supplemented
watercolours of an expressive yet wonderfully harmonious character,
sionists enjoyed provoking the philistines. Quite the contrary.
colourful
later
by impulses from Fauvism. But what shaped him above
in-
Brucke painters in
(1907-08), Macke immersed himself
French Impressionism and Cubism, which were
thing. His art evinces neither the
or
1887 1914
in
Berlin
in
mentioned whenever the
up, emotional
b.
name
school run by Corinth
stint at
the painting
killed
only a few
says: "Of us
all,
and bright as
weeks
I
in
North Africa.
broke out Macke donned a uniform, and was later. In his
touching obituary his friend Marc
he gave colour the brightest and purest
his entire character."
ring,
as clear
67
FRANZ MARC
1912
The small Yellow Horses Oil
on
canvas, 66 x 104
cm
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Franz Marc, co-editor of the Blauer Reiter Almanach,
is
probably the best-known animal painter this
modern
in
does
label
art.
little
sky
he never
and
animals
all
.
d.
1880 1916
nature
Munich,
in
Verdun
in
in
whole
.
.
What
.
Marc
himself,
who
originally
become so
man
We
desires.
...
will
appeal or appear to
themselves born, as to
Art
will
liberate itself
from
the
was
feel, their
how
they really are,
absolute being
Marc repeatedly stated
in
..."
other words,
in
wanted
become a
to
metaphysi-
is
human ends and
no longer paint forests or horses
us, but
how
in
the
lyricism
On
its
altars
A new
way they would be
religion
a correpondence
would grow a new
would mirror the "animal
capture the
spiritual purity of
soul".
of references
full
whose
animals by increasingly artistic life
spiritualized
stylizing their
had
led
him to
(fig. 3).
The Small Yellow Horses gives a good sense utopia
German
Accordingly Marc attempted to
forms, a process that by the end of his brief abstraction
art
hu-
a forest or a horse
the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner and echoes of
Romanticism.
al-
in
pastor, described his vision of a religion of art thus: "Art cal, will
But
.
attracted him
the organic whole,
general."
.
lost himself in details,
ways only one element b.
Marc envisaged. He takes up the idea
of the sacred
of paradisal
harmony by
basing his animal depiction on a pattern traditionally employed for depictions of
back
human
to the
figures. His
preference for groups of three
convention commonly used since Antiquity
to
may go
depict the
Three Graces. Marc sets the three powerful horses' bodies circulating in
a cosmic landscape panorama and at the
same time
not one line too many, and, to the
is
severe and
principle,
to
matter, "brutal in
within their
gracefully rounded forms
artist's
interaction.
mind, every colour
and
intellectual",
heavy",
and
first
academy, took two study stylistic directions of
Lenggries
contrasted to a yellow representing
sensual principle. The red,
Marc, studying
is
idyll
tact with
it.
philosophy at the university then trips to Paris that
in
art at
the
confronted him with the
the French avant-garde. After summering
his art. In
of Sindelsdorf
happenings
friendship with Reiter and
embodies
human image almost
in
Upper
1912 on a
all
Artistic
exchange
within the Blauer
an involvement with Robert Delaunay,
visit
to the
Bavaria. Yet he did not lose con-
the art centre, developing, for instance, a deep
in
August Macke.
above
entirely
1909 Marc moved from Munich
to Paris with
whom
September 1912, to a
in
he
Macke, increased the degree of
abstraction of Marc's painting and the evocativeness of his palette.
woodcut
in
1908, he began increasingly to concentrate on depic-
in
disappeared from country
in turn,
being fought by the two other colours
tions of animals, to the point that the
met
complex
joyful,
an attempt to overcome
key
in
possesses symbolic meaning: the blue representing the "male
the female, gentle,
him the animal was
for
field
nature attracted
in
above
him, but
There
field, their
justice
described as follows:
later
force
Of course
Marc's qualities, which Kandin-
"Everything
own
In
the Berlin journal Der Sturm, he published a
poem by
the Expressionist poet Else Lasker-Schuler
(1869-1945). This marked the beginning tween two like-minded
artists.
It
precipitated
of a long friendship bein
a series of wonderful
watercolour postcards by Marc and Lasker-Schuler, "Letters to the Blue Rider Franz Marc"
in
first
published as
the journal Die Aktion.
69
FRANZ MARC
1913-14
Tyrol x 144.7 cm Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne Oil
on
In
canvas, 135.7
1912 the events
Marc's
in
came
life
Moderner Kunst
Staatsgalerie
to a head. While
in
Berlin
side
seems absorbed
he met the Brucke painters, and immediately made a selection of
their
energy.
which would subsequently be shown at the second and
final
sages.
prints
Blauer Reiter exhibition
were present
them went
that year
Bonn
to
Macke
Futurists,
Bonn
a large fluence
In
is
apparent
in
one
Sturm, the
From there they continued on
for his part,
latter,
pictures he
mounted
1913 Marc was
material role
artists
whose
exhibition
autumn Marc
who impressed them
Robert Delaunay,
more than Marc. The
far
about the
Expressionists". That
with his friend Macke.
Paris, to visit
conversely, the Munich artists
where Herwarth Walden introduced
Berlin,
in
"German
to the public as
And
Munich.
in
hung and
after his return
intensively studied
oil
"First
German Autumn
He
played a
land and the United States.
portant overview of
A
modern
Italy,
great deal of room at
Austria, Switzerthis,
mals have
his
a
Marc showed seven
renowned Tower of Blue Horses
New
Year's postcard of
Poor Land of Maria
in
Tyrol,
and
March 1913.
The Solomon
R.
1913
Tyrol.
In
the
(lost;
to the
first
lypse,
per
based on a composition on
marked by the
scene of the in
traditional
picture,
Tyrol,
was more
interpretation of the Alps as a
"sublime", the potentiated locale of
man's insignificance
face of the vastness of nature. After being briefly on view
in
tumn Salon, the painting was removed by Marc and reworked shortly before
York,
a landscape seemingly per-
vaded by profound resignation. The next strongly
paintings, including
done thereafter (New
in
he was sent to the front
lines,
the Auin
1914,
when he added
the
madonna on a crescent moon. Every element
of this forbidding land-
scape with farmhouses cowering
of a mighty
70
at the
base
in
the midst of the turbulence and steep mountains.
lence,
motif
several crescent
The madonna on a crescent moon, focus
left. is
of her
intersect the mountains.
of a
few planned Bible
statement.
ment
mountain-
at the up-
cosmic turbu-
garment spreads over the farmhouses
emerge
No
theme
to
announce an abandonbegan
1916, aged
sold
many
of his
his art
this path,
thirty-six, in
he
fell
Marc volunteered
for military
Tower of
at Verdun. Marc's
the "Degenerate Art" exhibition of
works
experienced a second, true triumph.
temperas brought
1
937.
out of the country. Yet after the Sec-
DM
In
1989,
2,600,000 (approx. $1,300,000),
the highest price ever paid for a work of art at a that date.
to consider in
(fig. 3).
ond World War, of his
seems
clearly religious
increasingly put into practice as he set out on the path to
Blue Horses was included
The Nazis
conveys such a
of animals, which the artist
1914, halfway down
service. In
like
rays that perpendicularly
other work of Marc's, with the exception
illustrations,
addition, the painting
In
of the
In
one
moons
of the
simultaneously a symbol of divine grace and an apocalyptic
- the pyramid
abstraction
ac-
Guggenheim Museum) he arranged houses, gloomy
cemetery crucifixes and a few animals
At the top right a blood-red sun shines behind
fled.
appears
was
travelled to Tyrol with his wife
painting
the foreground recalls an apoca-
in
creatures are to be seen; Marc's beloved ani-
The suns are counterbalanced by
1913 and
poet Else Lasker-Schuler), The
Marc had
living
threatening peaks, while a second sun, the black sun of the Apoca-
corded to Delaunay, Marc, Macke, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Munter, Klee, Kubin and the Futurists.
shapes are penetrated by black pas-
charred tree trunk
No
lyptic scythe.
the most im-
the First World War,
art prior to
Der
Represented were ninety
Salon".
from France, Germany, Russia, Holland,
A huge
into the diagonal facets pulsating with Futuristic
crystalline
a protective cloak. From the figure
organizing, at Herwarth Walden's Berlin gallery
in
in
in-
Tyrol.
a great undertaking.
in
enthusiastic
from France. Their
of his masterpieces, the
involved
was
to
though
both,
Luminous
German
auction to
71
LUDWIG MEIDNER
1913
Apocalyptic city Oil
on
canvas, 79 x 119
Miinster, Westfdlisches
cm
Landesmnseum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte
Meidner has been called
most expressionist
the
Expressionists,
the
of
but this
true
is
in
d.
in
Darmstadt
group known as the
characterized by
1906
from
to
1907
Paris,
in
he moved
definitively to Berlin
1908, the
city
which he de-
one
of E.T.A.
the world".
In
artists,
in oils,
restless stories",
Indian ink,
also his analytical self-portraits, which, sciously demonic". All the energy
little
man,
and who,
"like in
assisted by
whom
a figure out
his youth,
had
and other graphic media, but in
his
own words, were
was concentrated
in
rhythmic
zigzag folds, an almost caricature-like exaggeration, and
was added
in
sponsible
for,
bursting
in
gestures
the form of an emergent big-city euphoria, the fascin-
and effervescent urban world, which was
re-
other pictures, the series of "Apocalyptic Land-
open as
if
under bombardment from the cosmos. The
the present painting
is
the victim of such an infernal catas-
trophe; ant-like, a few people are fleeing from the exploding stars and
the terrestrial conflagration. The tectonic interplay of verticals and 72
Greco
this
1541-1614), by the
(c.
in
Berlin
he was
addition,
familiar with the
The "Apocalyptic Landscapes"
all
1
923,
deep shadows,
First
resulted,
it
is
light.
thought, from a
World War. This may well be true
in part,
but
they were triggered by Meidner's intense involvement with
ancient Jewish prophecies of
Book
in
sets, staging a big-city street once more, with
and the atmosphere heightened yet further by cones of
premonition of the
Tower.
Eiffel
photographic double-exposure
technique. For the film Strasse (Street), directed by Karl Grune
above
Italian
1912), and by the
in
Robert Delaunay's prismatically fanned out views of the In
of Revelation. In
lutionary "Arbeitsrat
fiir
doom and
with the
New
1918, after the war, he was active Kunst", a kind of artists' soviet,
Testament in
the revo-
and by
1
923
at
the latest he had turned his back on Expressionism and the "modern
and rediscovered the
spirit"
panoramic fantastical cityscapes, depicted from a bird's-eye perspec-
city in
El
(whose work could be seen
which he gave expression
encouraged by Max Beckmann, an extra component
among
in-
lines,
scapes" up to 1916, on which Meidner's fame was based. These were
tive,
Futurists
previously also at self
ation with a tumultuous
be seen the extent to which Meidner was
"con-
of great pathos. In Berlin,
re-
grounds of the Mannerist
he founded the
devoured Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, had begun creating not only his portraits
and
collapsing fagades, houses seemingly transfixed by
of
whose breakthrough was
Hoffmann's short
extreme colour
tails. In
moral capital
Herwarth Walden's gallery Der Sturm. At that time, Meidner,
of
torn apart
Meidner created the
Jewish
George Grosz had described as a
is
contrasts and by diagonals reminiscent of comets'
scribed as "the intellectual and
1912, together with two other
"Pathetiker",
and disparate perspectives and
lated compositions can
ni,
Bernstadt,
distorted
in
The whole structure
fluenced by the flickering colourfulness and splintered picture back-
is
where he met Amedeo Modiglia-
in
dissolved
only of a limited part of his total
ing
1884 1966
is
shifted proportions.
oeuvre, which
numerous caesuras. After study-
b.
horizontals
1
-
like
937 branded
luctantly in
award
in
faith of his fathers,
naturalistic
orthodox Judaism, to
symbolic depictions. Meidner,
proto-expressionist literary circles, and him-
Kokoschka and Kubin - a superb
a "degenerate Jew". From
- as an
1964 he
lic's
home
Barlach,
in
exile in
1
939
to
1
writer,
952 he
was
lived
-
in
re-
England, before returning to Germany, where
received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the Federal Repub-
for merit.
73
PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
1906-07
camelia sprig
self-portrait with Oil
on wood,
Essen,
x 30.5
61.5
cm
Museum Folkwang
The year
1
905 was
rele-
vant not only as the founding year of Die Brucke.
It
also
marked
an important transition for three northern
whose
of
take
an
then began to
art
Modersohn-
Paula
direction.
Becker had gone
Worpswede,
a
b.
1876 1907
in
Dresden,
in
Worpswede
Fritz
1899
to
outside
Mackensen
had established a colony of land-
scape painters
poet Rainer Maria Rilke
new
in
Worpswede. Everyone
unity of
man and
nature.
in
the
the group back
in
The small community,
which promised an escape from the anxiety and loneliness of modern city
life,
seemed
as well as freedom from the constrictions of the academy,
approach
to nature
in
familiar with
guin, during her brief studies
in
Paris.
Back
rural
in
to
Worpswede, she spon-
in art,
of colour
Gauguin.
Her Self-Portrait with Camelia Sprig ples of self-searching
lyrical
people, using earth colours
and heavy contours. Her concentration on broad expanses
and rigorous outlines owed much
is
one
of the finest
exam-
something by which Modersohn-Becker
always set great store. At the same time, the small painting reveals a
knowledge
of reproductions of Egyptian
mummy
portraits of the sec-
to fourth centuries B.C., striking coffin depictions with overlarge
eyes, clearly delineated faces, reduced,
great
mystery.
Beyond
this,
flat
forms, and expressions of
Modersohn-Becker accentuates the
colour contrast between the sonorous browns of the shadowed, 74
like
an aureole. The camelia
placed on the central vertical
and
strict-
axis, is
unsullied rural setting.
wede
sense the danger of
artist to
a letter of February 29,
past too
much
in
1
...
1
and peasant
All of
At any
our
rate,
I
art,
goes hand
idyllic,
Worpsin
hand
As she complained
life.
German
art
more
think
in
is
too bogged
down
highly of a free person
..."
905 Modersohn-Becker found
conventional
fact the only
provinciality that
consciously puts convention aside In
in
900, to Otto Modersohn, "We cleave to the
Germany.
the conventional
an apparently
in
Modersohn-Becker was
with an idealization of country
who
demonstrative-
as the pervading melancholy of this portrait reveals, a
Finally,
stranger ultimately remains a stranger, even
in
sprig,
a traditional symbol of growth
fertility.
her
way
to just
such an un-
emotionally powerful and far from the idealization of
genre scenes. During a second Paris sojourn she again studied
Cezanne and Gauguin, as ing year,
she saw the
first
Back
in
paintings by the Fauves.
In
well as the Nabis.
ter the birth of her first child,
Although she avoided
a suitable
the works of Cezanne and, even more, of Gau-
taneously began to depict ordinary
ond
ly
a perfect setting to realize this Utopian vision.
Modersohn-Becker had become
and the light-flooded blue of the background, which
surrounds her head
1889. One of
who soon met
them, Otto Modersohn, married the young Paula,
then dreamed of a
in
village
Bremen where d.
expressive
emotional,
frontal bust
Nolde,
artists,
and Modersohn-Becker,
Rohlfs all
German
ly
in
terms of bright
palette,
all
in
it
1
907, shortly af-
Worpswede.
Expressionist exaggeration, especially
Modersohn-Becker's
depth and power that gives pressionism.
she died
Paris the follow-
a
definite,
if
art
has an emotional
reserved, affinity with Ex-
,
75
OTTO MUELLER
1927
Gypsies with sunflowers Distemper on burlap, 145 x 105 Saarbriicken,
cm
Saarland-Museum
"Gypsy Mueller" was the
nickname of the painter who be-
came
the
Brucke
last
member
of the
1911. Reputedly
in
mother was a gypsy. At any Mueller
hood
felt
rate,
attracted from boy-
to the carefree
life
of these
vagabonds on the margins ciety,
his
of so-
as he did to those slender
young nude
among
girls lost in
thought
the reeds or bathing
in
woodland lakes who embodied b.
1874
in
Liebau (now Lubawka),
d.
1930
in
Breslau (now Wroclaw)
the Expressionist ideal of a reconciliation
between
After training as a lithographer
in Gorlitz, Silesia,
ied in
1894-96
in
he
out of place.
felt
hart
Hauptmann
at the art
(1
He
academies
received encouragement from the author Ger-
862-1 946),
whom
to
he was distantly
tantly,
the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck,
made
whose
Among
a lasting impression on him.
provocation and posing, played an outsider's
nuances
He
the Brucke artists
and lack of interest
role. Technically, too,
set a personal accent by adopting distemper instead of in
related.
more impor-
spiritualized figures ap-
Mueller, with his quiet, introverted personality
Distemper colours dry
life.
Dresden and Munich, where
the acquaintance of Paula Modersohn-Becker and,
oil
in
in
1911.
that differ from those with which
was a master
of distem-
per and lent his pictures an inimitable charm, a friable airiness and poetic immateriality.
At the
same
time, this technique fairly
demanded
the use of large formats and monumentally simplified forms. Mueller's burlap painting surfaces (often from unstitched sugar sacks) occasionally recall the rough-textured surface of frescoes.
Gypsies with Sunflowers, finished emotional conflict arising from a 76
difficult
in
1927 during a period
personal relationship,
in
fidelity to his
the face of
was ly
of
indi-
established style and favourite subject
postwar recognition of a kind ac-
official
member
corded to no other
of the Brucke.
offered a professorship at the Breslau
357
could not prevent
most
part destroyed
in
with identical features
of his 1
in
girl
lage, are
The
works being confiscated and
appeared over and over again
Even the nursing mother
her.
1919 the
artist
(which admitted-
narrow faces, dark, medium-long
in
ized youthfulness of the
beside
spring
In
Academy
for the
937). The same prototype adolescent
"Gothically" slender figures,
in
girl,
and
hair,
his work.
the present picture takes on the standard-
who
compared
is
to the
open sunflower
actual world of gypsies, the surroundings of their
vil-
suggested, but without a trace of sociocritical interpretation.
Even the melancholy undertone that now makes
embedded
in
paradise lost
an
The
idyllic,
much
outsiders of
modern
Romantic context,
like that felt
ings of Tahitian islanders.
itself felt
points
industrial society
in
a
seem
reflecting a yearning for a
by Gauguin and projected
in
his paint-
Between 1924 and 1929 Mueller found
material for his gypsy paintings on travels to Hungary, Dalmatia, Ru-
mania and Yugoslavia. For a time he even
lived in
a gypsy
camp
side Budapest. Using such experiences he also produced his
"Gypsy
Portfolio,"
among
his
tically
nine partly hand-tinted colour lithographs which are
most outstanding works
in
and thematically quite died of tuberculosis, art
artist
his
of graphic
art.
limited. In critic
stylis-
1926, four years before the
and playwright Carl Einstein noted
book, Art of the 20th Century, "With an easy laxness Mueller
sweetens nudes
or
German landscapes
be achieved, but most blue and green and kind
out-
famous
Apart from early experiments, Mueller's oeuvre remained
he
they are applied. Their handling therefore entails an exact and careful consideration of the drying process. Mueller
matter even
different direction.
Mueller stud-
made
parently
and
art
cates Mueller's
[of his art]
monotonous
may have become
rarer,
...
Charm may
occasionally
sinks into a shallow saccharinity of quiet lineature." Today voices of this
but they have not grown entirely
silent.
77
GABRIELE MUNTER
1908
schoolhouse, Murnau on cardboard, 40.6 x 32.7 cm Madrid, Collection of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, on loan Oil
At
glance
first
seems
it
quite unassuming, this small view
schoolhouse
of the
And
Murnau.
in
yet this picture stands at the
to
Museo Tbyssen-Bornemisza
less contributes to the equilibrium In
contrast to this calculated
in
Munter's development.
ibly rapid
Munter
enrolled
1877
1962
in Berlin, d.
in
Murnau
in
Munich, where she
two set
off
New
southern In
German
908
was a
in
sations about
art,"
1901 she
into freelance art. In
with Kandinsky.
become one
the precise dating
fields
in
and plainest
total of eight flat
enclosed
in
first
1
settled
904
the
of the
later of
most
of
the
significant
hour.
foothills of
in
her
the Bavarian Alps
done on
that
the lower centre.
buildings,
in
It
"It
many conver-
diary.
of this fruitful collaboration
of the schoolhouse, the fourth
largest
In
As a member
enjoyable period of work with
recalled the artist
was the present view
August depicts
27, as indicated by
one
of Murnau's
a radically simplified composition of a
elements separated by heavy contours. The colour these contours have hardly any internal nuances,
modelling or shading, being enlivened solely by short, colourful brushstrokes. This reduction to a nearly geometric planar order neverthe-
78
Kandinsky and Jawlensky that summer
by Jawlensky: Gauguin and van
Gogh
wrote,
the provincial town of Murnau on the Staffelsee.
A document
her,
the folk art of verre eglomise. "After a brief period of torment," she
in-
Munter, her partner Kandinsky, Jawlensky and
lovely, interesting,
by
regard Munter relied on various sources, apparently
ceptable for women. After an
Marianne von Werefkin explored the from their base
jointly
In this
only art career then socially ac-
Expressionists of the 1
Murnau.
of hues. Also, similar formal approaches
Assocation of Munich and a short time
summer
in
coming a drawing teacher, the
on journeys that took them to Venice, Tunisia, Holland,
Artists
was developed
contoured colour
became acquainted
Blauer Reiter, Munter advanced to
from
suggested above
France, and, on more than one occasion, to Russia. the
transition
Diis-
in
heritance brought financial inde-
pendence, she risked the leap
and comparable paintings began a
this
seldorf, with the intention of be-
School of Art for Ladies
b.
the
in
painting process charged with intuitive expression.
With
Munter's earlier Impressionist-oriented style to an Expressionism that
At the age of twenty Gabriele
detail depicted.
brushed areas,
sketchy details and unpainted cardboard ground suggest an incred-
beginning of a decisive turningpoint
and harmony of the
balance, the thinly
"I
extract."
Munch and
-
to feeling
did.
When war
artistic crisis
1920s.
before
in
examples
more
of
or less im-
final
step to abstraction, as
broke out she followed him to Switzerland,
yet soon their paths diverged. Munter
and
were found
a content - to abstracting - to giving an
However, Munter never took the
Kandinsky
for the
Matisse's Fauvism for the range
great leap - from copying nature -
made a
pressionistically
all
fields,
went through years
finally returning to painting at
of personal
the end of the
79
EMIL NOLDE
1912
The Legend of st. Maria Aegyptiaca on canvas, triptych: central painting 105 x 120 cm, wings 86 x 100 cm each Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle Oil
Hansen,
Emil
born
in
masklike faces often have a distorted expression verging on carica-
Nolde near Tondern, Schleswig
ture; the
(now Tonder
whole of the canvas
ed
his
nym
in
in
Denmark), adopt-
birthplace as a pseudo-
in
1902. Training as a
being."
furni-
Nolde's
ture draughtsman, studies at the
School
Karlsruhe
from
Crafts,
|X
\
many
Crafts,
were
892
1
b.
1867 1956
in
Nolde (near Tondern),
in
Seebull (near Neukirchen)
began
When he
to concentrate
settled
in
of the
standing graphic
1903 on
on garden and
and
oil
- these
most outwater-
artists,
painters of Ex-
the island of Alsen and
floral motifs, his
palette gradually
developed to become a vehicle of ecstatic emotion. circle
trips
stations on Nolde's path to
colourists
pressionism.
and
teacher at the
study
becoming one d.
Arts
School of Arts and
Gallen
St.
of
1906,
In
in
the
around Karl Ernst Osthaus, Nolde studied works by van Gogh,
Gauguin, Ensor, and met Edvard Munch.
The suggestiveness his painting attack
and the
into proximity with
Brucke, to which he belonged from February
1907 and To
with
ing those years,
when
whose members he
George Grosz's
cite
later
the inspiration took him, he threw
liquid
1906
to the
end
of
remained on friendly terms.
he "no longer painted with brushes. He
blissful intoxication."
passion of
the aims of the
away
later said that,
his brushes,
dipped his
and smeared around on the canvas
Nolde's pictures looked as
if
in
they had been pro-
colours that had bled into each other, unconstricted by
contours, which led to the frequent impression of misdrawing.
His group of religious paintings, of Nolde's major contributions to entirely
focused on the transcendental,
depicted.
80
The
commenced
modern
art.
spiritual
in
1909, was one
The compositions are meaning
of the
scene
figures are brought up very close to the viewer; their
is
words, reflected "the mystical depths of human-divine
the middle panel of the present great triptych of
In
cloak,
A
is
shown
wall.
in
saint, clad in
1912
devot-
a bright red
prayer with arms raised ecstatically towards heaven.
Madonna
blue-clad
and the
suffused by saturated, luminous colours which,
ed to the legend of Maria Aegyptiaca, the
statue stands
a niche
in
in
the golden yellow
Nolde, a Protestant, lends the impassioned worship of Mary an
which
inspirational force of the very kind
opponents of Mariolatry denied
does not turn
to the
idol,
it.
earlier
church reformers and
Yet the former prostitute from Egypt
but addresses her ecstatic prayer straight to
God. The left-hand panel depicts her of glaring colours. Mary's figure
is
earlier licentiousness in
a range
suffused with golden yellow, and
the nipples of her heavy breasts shimmer purple. Grinning with
lust,
she extends her arms towards three greedy, grotesque male figures clad
in
blue,
green and purple. lies in
in
On
the right panel, the converted sinner
the throes of death.
her prostrate body, as a part
lion
An
ascetic says a prayer over
awaits his chance to spring and play his
the miraculous event. The background of the "waste land"
formed by a jungle
in
gradations of green and blue
exotic counterpart to the Christian
description of Nolde's working procedure dur-
old paint rag into the paint,
duced by
intuitive
stare, the features are primitivistically coarse,
own
and penitent
of his colour
brought Nolde
eyes
Garden
- perhaps a
of Eden.
Like his other religious compositions, this triptych
meant were
to
be viewed as an
"artistic
altar painting. All of
evocations, intended to serve
is
sultry,
art".
was
not
them, as Nolde stated,
81
EMIL NOLDE
1914
sun
Tropical on
Oil
canvas, 71
Nolde-Stiftung
Seebiill,
When
in
1905 Nolde
July
Germany and the
ern
cm
x 104.5
returned from Switzerland to north-
a Gauguin exhibition, noting,
visited
glorious colours
modern
in
he stopped over
island of Alsen,
art."
The
Weimar and
have never before seen such
"I
exotic realm to which the French
escaped became a destination
artist
in
which Nolde also yearned.
for
Not that he was a Romantic escapist. Rather, he pursued a well-degoal -
fined artistic
planned a book on
"Artistic
hibited
in
In
all
creativity
191
1
it
in
objects of the "savages", as he
The book was never pub-
Nolde studied objects by the Egyptians,
Assyrians, the indigenous peoples of Africa, southeast Asia and the
South
Two years
his wife to
Guinea. Their
trip
accompany a
of Ethnology overflowed.
took an opportunity offered
In
addition to
Nolde executed nineteen
numerous sketches and water-
oils in
the provincial town of Kae-
wieng, on the northwest point of present-day the
German
burg.
One
colonial administration of the
of this
New
scientific expedition to
took them to the South Pacific by way of Russia,
China, Korea and Japan. colours,
Museum
later the forty-six-year-old artist
him and
to
which the Berlin
Pacific, with
group of works
is
New
Ireland,
an island
New
Mecklen-
day called
Tropical Sun, which
was preceded
by a small preparatory drawing.
Having gone down
to the beach,
towards the horizon, where the sun zon
line divides
there
is
is
Nolde looked from sea
level
The
hori-
either rising or setting.
the horizontal format just below
the dark green, forested silhouette of
its
central axis. Visible
Nusa
undulating form penetrating the composition from the
respondence
in
finds a cor-
the white cumulus cloud above the horizon and
foaming breakers like
Lik island. This left
in
in
the
the foreground. The sun stands over the treetops
an incandescent red disc
in
the midst of a radiant aureole that
is
surrounded by darker cloud formations. The range of colours, applied for the
82
most
part
in
broad, impasto strokes, rises to a frenzy of vermil-
cadmium orange and
longer applied wet into
in
wet as
cobalt in
violet.
The
individual
tones are no
Nolde's earlier landscapes but spread
expansive areas. Their intensity or
brilliance
with garishness, as the artist repeatedly
is
not to be confused
emphasized
in
view of his im-
pressions of the South Pacific. Far from requiring any expressive exaggeration, he said, these colours conformed with actual in
phenomena
the tropics.
Nolde
"saccharine tasteless forms" ex-
the "glass cases of the salons".
But while preparing
lished.
ritual
his autobiography, with the
in
of civilization.
Manifestations of the Natural Peoples",
which he intended to confront the noted
source of
to recover the "primal", the
been buried under the flotsam
that had
ion red,
Nolde did not address the
First
World War
in
no visions of destruction or apocalyptic landscapes Instead, to his tropical paintings
his art.
He
like, say,
painted
Meidner.
Nolde added northern German low-
land landscapes, coastlines and gardens, replying to the vicissitudes
age by charging nature and
of the
religious subjects with an optimistic
mysticism. Kirchner described Nolde's art bid
and too
primitive".
He
in
his diaries
as "often mor-
thought Nolde's mysticism diverted
his col-
league too far from the formal issues of modernism. That same ten-
make a grave error in 933, when he stated that was a genuine expression of the "German He was rudely awakened from this dream by the Nazis, who the
dency
led
Nolde
to
1
his Expressionist painting soul".
following year delivered Nolde's paintings over to the derision of the philistines.
83
MAX PECHSTEIN
1917
palau Triptych on canvas, 119 x 353 cm
Oil
x 171 cm, wings 119 x 91
(central panel 119
cm
each)
Ludwigshafen, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum
The Expressionists enthuadopted the modern
siastically
view
own ego
or
self.
scene
fused by the
of nature suf-
artist's
here Eckersbach,
in
Berlin
took
an
into
run
to
its
course unaffected by the conof
flicts
stein, too,
seemed
life
ego
was because
exotic realm, this
Max Pech-
civilization.
eyes the carved and painted roofbeams
this road. In his
from the South Pacific island of Palau, which he and other Brucke artists
Museum
studied at the Dresden
archetypal unity of art and
of Ethnology,
They seemed
embodied an
face of a murderous
in
manner
Brucke period
of the
ly
stylized, not
so
wing
is
central panel
is
a boat opposite, two of
earth and
up
this
air,
more because he was the
den
first
piety
and awe
pressed
[their
"I
see the carved
of the
idol
his idealistic attitude,
years
in
terror, their fear
he set
off for the
the Palau Islands. But he
taken prisoner by the Japanese,
was
ed
into the army.
84
when
in
South Seas
their
submis-
April
to
1914,
managed
a daredevil escape,
way
of Hawaii,
of the front lines proved too
was
and
New
Germany - where he was immediately
The horrors
like
spend a few
surprised there by the war,
turned as a coal trimmer on freighters by to
and
fate."
year,
and the Netherlands
he
images, into which trembling
Pechstein was only acting consistently
Nolde the previous
forsake quiet Dres-
incomprehensible forces of nature have im-
makers'] hope and
sion to an unavoidable
artist to
Coloured by
for the big city of Berlin.
could say of them:
Brucke
re-
York
induct-
much
for
whom occupy the
and correspondingly,
who
to-
right-hand wing and
one
in
still
symbolic
had done
Tahiti
counterimage
fish,
human beings and
take
birds,
triad
form. Pechstein interpreted Palau - as Gauguin
-
terms of
in
his
own Romantic
to "materialistic" Europe,
ity
the
left
a boat. The
on the middle panel. The substantially emphasized motifs of water,
months on
all
child, in
likewise dominated by a trio of seated figures,
way, just what the group had pursued during their carefree
carvings affected Pechstein
neoclassical scenes spread
gether with a fourth, standing person turn to the three male figures
of an island that
expectations, as a
an ideal paradise for
fishing,
oneself, rather than seeing the historical real-
was
part of a colonial empire.
After the war Pechstein, like Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff,
the Moritzburg Lakes: a Utopian alternative to the perverted industrial
And perhaps these indigenous
suppressing the "savage"
favour of a tranquil harmony.
a family of islanders, father, mother and
swimming and enjoying
to reflect,
civilization,
in
much expressive as
a different
world.
into the
across the central panel and two flanking wings. Depicted on the
in
life.
to return to
memories
Within the continuous landscape panorama, various decorative-
If
of the leading protagonists
shifted the
in
was released
his travel
distil
world
artists
of this aesthetic, Paul Gauguin,
1955
Pechstein began to
which implied that
one
1881
suffered a nervous breakdown and
Now
compelling composition of his Palau triptych, unfolding a peaceful
point of their
b.
He
Berlin.
aesthetic of individual creativity,
the world solely from the stand-
d.
him.
a founding
member
in
(Working Council for
remained
politically
1918
Art),
and
engaged.
after
1
surprise that
when
disbanded a short time
He joined
and helped produce propaganda
was no
it
the League for
for the
later
Human
he
Rights
young Soviet Union. Thus
the Nazis clamped
933, Pechstein was one of
was
Kunst
of the revolutionary Arbeitsrat fur
down on modern
their first Expressionist victims.
it
art in
85
CHRISTIAN ROHLFS
1916
Acrobats Tempera on canvas, 110 x 75.5 Essen, Museum Folkwang
cm
As French
and
dance
nineteenth cen-
from the
subjects
tury,
preceding
the
in
art of the
vaudeville
among
great popularity
Such
pressionists.
groups
dogs
who,
in
like
injury that eventually
the Ex-
stein farmer
as under-
artists
selves, sold their souls
b.
d.
1849 1938
in
Niendorf,
in
Hagen
seemed
"tight-wire act" of the Expressionist artist
on
of respectable mid-
The
exaltation
the perfect symbol for the
who pushed
way
very typical of him. This
is
seen
in
his vital
it
in
a sub-
acrobat picture of
1916, based on contrasts and tensions, and evincing a refined, paralcomposition. Against the bright red background, the pair are de-
picted
in
complementary poses that form, as
comprehensive brated, graceful
The
figure.
motif
movement -
impression of great
vitality.
overlapping picture planes,
it
were, a single, rotating
employs every
upright and head
The
possibility of equili-
down -
to
convey an
figures are elongated almost to the
point of mannerism, with the main accent
on heavy contour
whose transparency
is
lines
and
achieved through
the tempera technique Rohlfs began to develop about 1913. This gives the figures an airiness that belies their physical massiveness,
convincing us that artist
it
was concerned
se, archetypal
nean vase
forms
paintings.
was not acrobats as
in
motion such as those seen
The
whom
the
movement
per
individuals with
but abbreviations or ciphers for in
ancient Myce-
graphically textured paint surface of the
background reveals the influence 86
first
had almost turned time,
in
1897
School of Decorative
who
in
1
in
of
Fauvist colour field painting,
in
Soest.
Due
late developer.
to a serious
for
two years.
A
fellow Holstein-
fifty
before he
Impressionist
and then-director of the Weimar
architect
Arts, introduced
him to the
901 offered Rohlfs a post
built in
saw
Weimar. Then Henry van de Velde
art
at the
patron Karl Ernst
Folkwang Museum
Hagen. There he became acquainted with French
Post-Impressionism and Pointillism as well as with van Gogh. Yet the decisive impulse to strike out into uncharted territory
vard Munch,
A
whom
Rohlfs met
highly productive
in
artist,
latest,
1904.
in
his
were washed "Third
in
Germany, and from
1
9 2 1
at the
he could be called an Expressionist - a representative of that
version of the style that values,
came from Ed-
Rohlfs began increasingly to sympa-
thize with the avant-garde currents
Christian Rohlfs, too, treated this motif, transforming
lel
bed
to his
(1863-1957), the Belgian
himself to the
limits.
tle
the
then being
for their livelihood
1905 and 1906
necessitated a leg amputation, the son of a Hol-
was confined
painting. Rohlfs art for
dependent
money
in
known as a
is
the author Theodor Storm (1817-1888), suggested he go into
Osthaus,
dle-class citizens.
of dancers, the daring of artistes,
themon the
er,
marketplace, not respectable yet
the
he befriended
was what
Rohlfs
enjoyed
performers
society,
whom
Nolde,
circus,
were viewed as embodying marginal
which Rohlfs had intensively studied, as well as inspiration from Emil
case out. In
German
1
its
expressive force primarily from colour
906
then increasingly subdued, as
the Brucke artists
Arts and Crafts Exhibition"
sidered inviting him to sons, objected.
drew
initially brilliant,
become
saw in
Rohlfs's
work
in
it
the
Dresden. They con-
a member, but Nolde, for obscure rea-
87
EGON SCHIELE
1910
standing Male Nude (self-portrait) Pencil, watercolour,
Vienna, Graphische
cm
white tempera, 55.7 x 36.8
Sammlung Albertina
Oskar
Alongside
Ko-
koschka, Schiele was the most
prominent
personality
supported
repeatedly
famous
Gustav
1918),
who
talent
early
on.
the
(1862-
the
In
906
1
student
a
by
Klimt
recognized Schiele's
period from still
was
to
1
909, while
the
at
short
Academy, Schiele passed
d.
1890 1918
in Tulln in
(Lower Austria)
from a
dry,
Vienna ic
decorative Art
Nouveau a
la
the present large-format
portrait,
the
artist's
naked torso
rises
a leaning tree stump though the vertical format, the right arm,
contrast,
extended
at the joint like
physical
stiffly into
some
framework
the horizontal, only to abruptly turn
tree branch struck by lightning.
sits
a masklike
skull with
scream. With unprecedented expressive periencing one's
own
mirror
image
is
On
in
down
this bizarre
a face distended into a
radicality,
the potential of ex-
transformed into an
artifice that
extreme experience, the
Klimt to a radical formal vocabulary of
vehement
edge
line
becomes a
thin,
sharp, often cutting
that dissects and, avoiding no dissonance, penetrates into the
no-man's land of the empty plane. Despite
this verve,
not one line too
man image
is
many
or
economy
one too
worked out
to the
of
few. full,
means
is
maintained. There
The creaturely aspect
is
of the hu-
an existentialism reminiscent of
late-Gothic images of mercy, recalling the tortured body of the suffer-
gestural paint application.
By 1910 Schiele had
was dominated by
In
like
rapidly
nondescript academ-
great expressive force, including figurative distortion and a
splintered contouring that lends the fig-
verges on hallucinatory self-insight. The shaping of form becomes an
through an adaptation of
style
were
Vienna
through various creative phases, b.
it
ure an association with frozenness, desiccation, crippling.
Aus-
in
He
Expressionism.
trian
evocative, hesitant, as
work
arrived at his inimitable style. His
only a few motifs, centring on the portrait and
ing Christ. In
1912 Schiele was accused
of "disseminating pornographic
the nude. Yet, to cite Dietmar Elger, "unlike the other Expressionists,
drawings" and given a prison sentence. His
[Schiele] did not attempt to read
from many quarters, yet a small, committed group of supporters made
of his
often a
more eloquent testimony than the face
trayed. Schiele
bearers of
now made
itself
possible exhibitions and sales
of the person por-
of the short-lived artist's work.
the entire body and every limb into equal
expression." Generally Schiele did without any
artistic
indication of interior solely
physiognomic content from the face
models alone. With Kokoschka, the play of the hands was
space or landscape surroundings, concentrating
on the hypersensitive lineaments of the human body.
On August
25, 1913, the
artist
noted
in
a
letter:
"Mainly
I
now
observe the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers.
Everywhere one
is
put
in
mind of
similar stirrings of pleasure portraits
the
and
human
dered 88
in
similar
and pain as
motions in
self-portraits this observation
figure takes
on a
plants
the
..."
In
human body, many of his
appears reversed,
plantlike character
the elegant, sinuous lines of Art
in
-
in
that
not, of course, ren-
Nouveau but
with a nervous,
-
if
more
in
art triggered hostilities
Germany than
in
Austria
-
j\£K^r~-*.
.
\
89
KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF
1911
Rosa schapire
portrait of Oil
on
Berlin,
cm
x 76
canvas, 84
Briicke-Museum
(who
Schmidt
Karl
1905 added the name birthplace,
Rottluff, to
was
only
not
Brucke
artist
Even
1884 1976
in Rottluff
(near Chemnitz),
group.
Brucke
devel-
style
his
own way whenever
possible, for instance not taking
the group's excursions to
in
the Moritzburg Lakes outside Dresden but remaining faithful to the
retical
Dangast
letters
Berlin
Oldenburg province. "There are almost no theo-
statements by
trast to Kirchner
few
in
him,"
notes Lothar-Gunther Buchheim.
he never subjected
and notes
...
and paintings went up
in
2000 drawings and many
rapidly
of the palette knife. After a visit to
made
in
heavy impasto with an
Gogh and
often making use
Nolde on Alsen island
Dangast landscapes began
to
show a change
1
906, that
in style.
Ex-
unmixed colour now
spread across the canvas, whose white showed through
in
places and
grainy texture determined the surface character of the image.
The forms
increasingly
grew
in size,
and compositional
from the intersection of separate colour a framework Schapire.
90
in
From about 1909, Schmidt-
itself felt.
pansive, daringly juxtaposed areas of thinned,
whose
watercolours
of black contour lines, as
lines resulted
fields.
A
short time later
came
seen
in
the Portrait of
Rosa
in
in
1907. She furthered
numerous
cata-
articles,
in
her apartment (which
was
later
destroyed), for which he designed virtually everything, from murals to
and
furniture, carpets his patron
these
a
total of
portraits,
friend,
now
utilitarian
seated
in
objects. Schmidt-Rottluff portrayed
four times between 1911 and 1919. in
the Briicke-Museum, has
The
of
first
become the most
fa-
earliest Schmidt-Rottluff ever executed.
a half-length, format-filling depiction of the
is
artist's
an armchair. Her head under the broad-brimmed hat
rests musingly on her veritably explodes,
left
arm.
In
contrast to this calm pose, the colour
accented by energetic brushstrokes and broad ex-
panses. The predominant brown gradations and the green of the
dress set a complementary contrast to and amplify the
arm
raised violet
in
front of this red
face with
1912
lent his
First
brief
said, occasionally slipped into the
wood
to
The
involvement with French Cubism
subsequent paintings a greater succinctness
1914 he began blocky
light red.
ground leads the eye to the reddish-
blue eyes.
its brilliant
Schmidt-Rottluff's
his
1905 were marked by a
executed
excited, expressive touch inspired by van
influence also
The
art
art histo-
many works. Schapire commissioned
the young painter to furnish a room
must be
Schmidt-Rottluff's beginnings around
Rottluff's
when
the last war,
in
flames."
monumental Impressionism,
artist's
con-
"In
his style to written analysis.
were destroyed
apartment with about
loguing his prints, purchasing
mous, and was one of the
part
village of
him unreservedly, propagating his
The composition
went
Rosa Schapire, a Hamburg
and passionate supporter of the Brucke,
remained unique. Schmidt-Rott-
Berlin
in
the
in
rian
oped, the character of his works
luff b.
re-
1910, when a decidedly
in
collective
d.
who
autonomy during
membership
his
youngest
the
but the one
tained the most
his
own)
his
Schmidt-Rottluff had met
in
of
supplement
merely
this style with
iconic. In
that,
in it
about
impulses from exotic,
sculptures, lending his portaits an African look. After the
World War Schmidt-Rottluff reverted seamlessly to the themes of
the Briicke period, and
in
spite of
many
variations,
cultivate the Expressionist gesture to a ripe old age.
he continued
to
91
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
1910
The Red Gaze Oil
on cardboard, 32.2 x 24.6 cm
Munich, Stddtische Galerie im Lenbacbbaus
composer
The
Arnold
Schoenberg, who had been beginnings
the
1907
in
the hope of making his
in
this
ing
in
Vienna,
1951
in
Los Angeles
I
Red
atonal
all
of the superficial illus-
trative
tasks of painting, includ-
that of depicting
the face.
have never seen faces,
be-
but,
the eye, only their gazes," stated
in
in
his painting titles,
Gaze. is
dissolved into schematic, diffuse
colour structures from which the eyes "are directed
turbed souls at the affected viewer the surrounding colour
field"
..."
like
and yet emerge from it,
this
to
drown
maelstrom
"in
"like
or like mental precip-
from the depths of a dream. These fantasies
rely to
some
ex-
tent on the palette of a Robert Delaunay or the Fauves; there are a
few points of contact with Gerstl and Kokoschka's painting of the day; is
surely an inner affinity with the visions of
The immediate
catalyst for these ghostly faces
Gerstl's suicide. Living
himself
in
in
the
November 1908
Munch
may
same house as Schoenberg,
(fig.
10).
have been
well
Gerstl
hung
after breaking off his relationship with
Mathilde Schoenberg.
But
Red Gaze
it
would be mistaken
to interpret
solely in biographical terms.
such depictions as The
There was a
larger,
Symbolist
conception behind them. From about 1908 onwards, Schoenberg devoted himself to the idea of an interdisciplinary work of 92
light
and music as vehicles of meaning
which conveyed not
"alien"
content but their
own
in
Human
sonances.
beings and their image appeared
embodying
de-individualized prototypes,
art
on stage, a
their
intrinsic
suggestive force, their expressiveness, and not
their
own
right,
autonomy,
least, their dis-
context as
in this
universal forces
Schoenberg's friendship with Kandinsky dated
and energies.
to early
1911.
Their respective notions about the essence of art revealed
many
points
in
cultural allel
common.
Their interest
in
then-emergent theosophy out of
pessimism and an opposition
to materialism resulted
search for the ineffable, metaphysical, purely
berg's
oils
kindred
were
spiritual. In
in
a par-
Schoen-
and watercolours Kandinsky detected the presence of a
spirit.
Franz Marc and especially August Macke,
sceptical.
The
latter
in
contrast,
described Schoenberg's faces as "green-
eyed waterlogged breakfast
rolls
with an astral gaze". Yet in
it
cannot be
1911, had a
considerable influence on the Munich circle of the Blauer Reiter. To cite Kandinsky's opinion: "We see that
mirrors of dis-
The heads seem
visions of horror," as Peter-Klaus Schuster put
and there
movement,
addition of their means.
definition of colour, gesture,
gainsaid that Schoenberg's Harmonielehre, published
Here the human visage
itations
into
Schoenberg aban-
doned
Schoenberg. This tendency was also reflected such as The
period
art
mere
From these considerations he derived a
Launch-
in
ing
have looked people
26).
(fig.
music,
"I
cause
from
instruction
brief
that
at
He
metier as well.
Richard Gerstl
1874
in
mark
received
b.
at
Blauer
began painting
Reiter group,
d.
the
ot
in
true synthesis of the arts rather than a
Schoenberg the inner desire it.
Just as
in
the harmful)
his in
the necessary)
sheer painting."
music
.
.
.
I
speaks
in in
every picture by
the form suited to
Schoenberg does without the
painting and ...
of the artist
goes by a
would very much
superficial
direct path to the essential
like to call
(i.
e.
(i.e.
Schoenberg's painting
93
MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN
c.
1910
self-portrait Tempera on paper on cardboard, 51 x 34 cm Munich, Stddtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
Marianne
von
who had
aristocratic family ties
mother,
close
the czar's court. Her
with
a
herself
painter,
ap-
proved of her idea of becoming
an
artist
from the beginning. Af-
ter receiving
private instruction,
von Werefkin attended
Moscow
in
and,
art
from
school
1886,
spent ten years as a private pupil of the b.
1860
in
Tula, d.
1938
in
Ascona
llya
renowned
in
connection with a tragic
affair with
gunshot wound that crippled her
history painter
Repin (1844-1930)
Petersburg.
in
St.
1888, apparently
In
a young doctor, she received a
right hand. Yet
thanks to enormous
will-power and arduous training she learned to handle brush and penagain,
cil
and with great success -
in
academy
circles
brated as a "Russian Rembrandt". The year 1891
love with a young, penniless officer by the
name
she was cele-
brought an en-
counter that would have great consequences for her
life.
She
fell
in
of Alexei Jawlensky.
Since marriage was precluded for reasons of status, the pair moved abroad, arriving kin
Munich
in
1
896. There, on Giselastrasse, von Weref-
brought into being a salon that soon became a gathering point for
intellectuals
by
in
the
and
artists,
especially Russians.
early-nineteenth-century
Around 1900, inspired
Romantic group
Nazarenes, she formed a community of
artists
known as the
which was soon joined
by Kandinsky. She worshipped Romanticism, and revered French Symbolist
The Symbolistically tinged
literature.
also impressed her.
In
painting of the Nabis
1907, after a ten-year break
in
which she con-
cerned herself primarily with her partner's career, she returned to painting. In
1909 she became a founding member
of the
New
Artists
Association of Munich, but did not go along with the Blauer Reiter
when they 94
split off in
Her
Werefkin
came from a prosperous Russian
1911, and thus stood between the two camps.
ing the
Self-Portrait at the
happy years
Lenbachhaus
in
Munich was done durKandinsky and
of her close artistic contacts with
Gabriele Munter. The energetic pose, striking facial features, and ex-
travagant headgear reveal personality of the
much about
the worldly-wise and shrewd
The strong colours applied
sitter.
in
broad brush-
strokes and the continuous contour holding together the elongated
forms kin:
reflect the influences that held
most importance
for
von Weref-
the Nabis, and the "soul painting" of Edvard Munch. Beginning
from such points of departure, the those
to include
brilliant
artist
augmented her colour range
contrasts typical of Expressionism. Yet the
configurations were not yet abstracted to the point that they
subordinate to the colour, as
in
the case of
Line continued to play the key role
why
the pictorial
for instance,
in
field
in
many Brucke
defining the composition. This
does not take on the extremely
Jawlensky's
portraits.
became
paintings.
A
flat
is
effect seen,
noticeable traditionalism,
com-
bined with a certain mystical, Symbolist undertone, apparently pre-
vented von Werefkin -
who understood women's
communication - from
role principally as
what she so
elo-
quently advocated theoretically, namely the step to abstraction.
She
one
of
was probably
material
in
putting into practice
acquainting Kandinsky with the anthro-
posophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner and the early theosophical writings of
Madame
Blavatsky, which furthered his turn to pure, spir-
itualized abstraction. In
1
920, von Werefkin and Jawlensky separated
where they had gone
Ascona
in
1938.
to
in
Switzerland,
escape the war. She died impoverished
in
95
©2004TASCHEN GmbH Hohenzollernring 53,
Photo
D-50672
credits:
The publishers would
Koln
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express their thanks to the archives, museums,
like to
private collections, galleries
and photographers
support
for their kind
production of this book and for making their pictures available. otherwise, the reproductions were
Editing: Uta Grosenick, Cologne Editorial coordination: Sabine BleBmann,
Design: Sense/Net, Andy
Disl
and
Cologne
Birgit Reber,
publishers.
Cologne
In
made from
made
is
ARTOTHEK:
(left),
in
the
not stated
material from the archive of the
addition to the institutions and collections
descriptions, special mention
If
named
in
the picture
of the following:
Production: Ute Wachendorf, Cologne
English translation: John Gabriel, Worpswede
p.
7
(left), 8,
14
16
(right),
21, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47,
49, 53, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 83, 87, 93,
95
ISBN 3-8228-2126-8
© Phototheque des Musees de la Ville de Paris: © Musee Calvet, Avignon: S. 13 (photo: Andre Guerrand) © Archiv fur Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin: 19, 20 (right),
Copyright:
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Printed
in
Germany
p.
1
p.
© for the works of Max
Beckmann,
Otto Dix, Kees van Dongen,
James
Pierre Bonnard, Heinrich
Ensor, Lyonel Feininger,
Campendonk,
Conrad
George Grosz, Alexei von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul
Klee,
Felixmuller,
Oskar
Kokoschka, Gabriele Munter, Christian Rohlfs, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Georges Rouault, Arnold Schonberg,
Chaim Soutine: VG
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Page 4
I
WASSILY KANDINSKY Cover
for the catalogue of the
exhibition, based
OTTO MUELLER first
"Blauer Reiter"
on an Indian-ink drawing
Two
Sisters
n.d.,
Distemper on burlap, 90 x 71
St.
Louis, Saint Louis Art
Bequest of Morton D. Page 2
AUGUST MACKE Shop on canvas, 60.5 x 50.5 Essen, Museum Folkwang Milliner's
1914, Oil
cm
Museum,
May
cm
23, 51,
in this
series
— Klaus Humid EXPRESSIONISM — SURREALISM — athrin Klin REALISM — Kenan Stremmd DADAISM — Dietmai POPART
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VIDEO
Ig
ART— Joshua
CUBISM — Anne Gantefuhi FANTASY ART — Walter Schui
CONCEPT ART
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ART—
Daniel Ma./
V FUTURISM Sylvia Martin ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM MINIMAL
Daniel
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Art
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from TASCHEN -
a selection ART OF THE 20 th CENTURY Karl Kiilni
I
— IngoF.
Sdmedcenburger,
MAX BECKMANN — Ke.nha.d Spu OTTO DIX — EXPRESSIONISM GEORGE GROSZ — WASSILY KANDINSKY ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER — V PAUL KLEE
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AUGUST MACKE — Anna FRANZ MARC — Partsdi EDVARD MUNCH — Ulridi Bischofl EGON SCHIELE — Ke.nl. i
"Back to visual basics." International Herald Tribune, Paris
www.taschen.com
Klaus
Honnd
"work! intoxication! Brain racking! chewing, eating, gorging, rooting up! Rapturous birth pangs! jabbing of the brush, preferably right through the canvas. Trampling on paint tubes ..." Max
Pechstein,
1
920
/in Germany, but a
the E' in
an
entirely
new
way.
Max Pe
youth
ERNST BARLACH MAX BECKMANN HEINRICH CAMPENDONK LOVIS CORINTH OTTO DIX LYONEL FEININGER GEORGE GROSZ ERICH HECKEL ALEXEI VON JAWLENSKY WASSILY KANDINSKY ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER PAUL KLEE OSKAR KOKOSCHKA WILHELM LEHMBRUCK AUGUST MACKE FRANZ MARC LUDWIG MEIDNER PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER OTTO MUELLER GABRIELE MUNTER EMIL NOLDE MAX PECHSTEIN CHRISTIAN ROHLFS EGON SCHIELE KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF ARNOLD SCHOENBERG MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN
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