Expressionist Art

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Expressionist Art

• Before World War I

The painter of the future will be a colorist such
as has never existed. --Vincent Van Gogh
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What is Expressionism?

• German Expressionist relating to the movement in
  German art from about 1905 until about 1930 that
  favored distortion and exaggeration of shape and
  color to express emotion. Expressionist
  tendencies were first seen in the work of Vincent
  van Gogh and Norwegian artist Edvard Munch
  (1863-1944).
• German Expressionists sometimes paired harsh
  colors and strong lines with socially significant
  subjects. Others, such as the Russian artist
  Wassily Kandinksy, who immigrated to Berlin,
  emphasized elements of spirituality, using color
  to move viewers beyond the physical world to a
  state of emotion.

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Artists by Movement Der Blaue Reiter Centered
in Munich, 1911-1914

• Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) is a group of
  Expressionist artists led by Wassily Kandinsky
  and Franz Marc. One of the primary goals of the
  group was to use art to express spirituality.
  Other artists associated with the movement
  August Macke, Gabriele Munter, Alexei Jawlensky,
  Paul Klee and Heinrich Campendonk The movement
  was disrupted by World War I, in which Franz Marc
  and August Macke were killed.

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Kandinsky, Marc, Macke, Klee, Munter, Campendonk
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Apocalyptic Enthusiasm

• Marc's visionary images push towards an
  "apocalyptic enthusiasm" in the years preceding
  the war (1912-14) along with other
  contemporaries, like the writer Herman Hesse,
  this generation almost longed for the apocalypse
  to come as the only way to purge what they saw as
  a materialistic, hopelessly bourgeois and corrupt
  society.
• Durers Four Horseman of the Apocalypse

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Franz Marc Kandinsky

• Franz Marc had seen Kandinsky's 1909 show and had
  written in a review "Art today is following
  paths our fathers would never dare or dream of.
  In front of such paintings as these, it is as if
  one were in a dream, and could hear the horsemen
  of the Apocalypse."
• Kandinskys Rider of the Apocalypse. 1911

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Franz Marc Tower of Blue Horses

• By 1913, he was ready for his own Four Horses of
  the Apocalypse. They are blue (the spiritual
  color), they bear the crescent moon upon their
  chests -- and beyond them rises the rainbow of
  the new and spiritual world.

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Franz Marc The Fate of the Animals(1913)

• The most poignant moment is at center where the
  blue deer throws its head back in one final
  scream while the red ray of light cuts through
  the white of the deer's neck. In this massacre of
  the innocents, we get a kind of crucifixion scene
  that expresses an apocalypptic end of the world.
  On the reverse side of the canvas, the artist had
  written this inscription "And All Being is
  Flaming Suffering."

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Franz Marc Tyrol (Fall,1913, Spring 1914)

• Looking at the Tyrol, he saw the Virgin and the
  Infant Jesus riding on the crescent in the sky.

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Look Being in the face!

• Marc wrote "The goal of art is to reveal
  unearthly life dwelling behind everything, to
  break the mirror of life so that we may look
  Being in the face."

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Marcs End of Combat Painting

• He had marked the Tyrol with a dead tree in the
  shape of the scythe of death, and had written
  "Death and its wounds do not corrupt the soul. I
  do not really envision death as destruction... it
  is absolute deliverance... Death where is thy
  sting?"

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Kandinsky Sketch Composition

• . . . a beautiful work is a marriage of the
  inward and outer elements in terms of the
  law.--Wassily Kandinsky.
• In his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art
  (1912), Kandinsky argued that color, like sound,
  evokes emotions.

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Kandinskys Ideas

• Kandinsky was committed to using art as a way of
  changing the world. For him, the artist was a
  kind of messiah or prophet whose job it was to
  communicate a higher truth to humanity.
• 'Our minds are infected with the despair of
  unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal,' he
  warned. 'The nightmare of materialism which has
  turned the life of the universe into an evil,
  useless game, is not yet past it holds the
  awakening soul still in its grip.
• Kandinsky would do everything he could to loosen
  the grip of the material on the soul, and he
  exhorted his fellow artists to do the same
  'Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual
  possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in
  the building of the spiritual pyramid which will
  some day reach to heaven.'

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Kandinsky the artist as messiah

• At first, Improvisation 30 (Cannons) appears to
  be a random assortment of brilliant colors,
  shapes, and lines. But in the visual chaos, one
  can discern leaning buildings, a crowd of people,
  and Just one year later, Germany entered World
  War I.
• War themes were prevalent in many works of the
  German Expressionist movement. Chaotic scenes
  such as Improvisation 30 may also refer to the
  end of the world as foretold in the Bible.

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Kandinsky's Composition IV

• An awareness of Kandinsky's philosophy leads to a
  reading of Composition IV as expressing the
  apocalyptic battle that will end in eternal
  peace.

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Composition VII

• Composition VII is the pinnacle of Kandinsky's
  Pre-World War One artistic achievement.
• Composition VII combines the themes of The
  Resurrection, The Last Judgment, The Deluge and
  The Garden of Love in an operatic outburst of
  pure painting.

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Improvisation XXX1, 1913
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Improvisation XIV, 1910
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• In his early abstract paintings, such as
  Improvisation XXXI, 1913, Kandinsky pushed the
  limits and produced artworks that seemed to
  convey sheer energy.
• Colors affected Kandinsky profoundly, like pure
  emotions.

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Dunaberg, 1909.
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Kandinsky

• His uncompromising attitude to life and art, his
  faith in the unconquerability of the human
  spirit, came with him from Russia.
• Although Kandinsky spent most of his life in
  Germany and Paris, he retained his fervent belief
  in Orthodox Christianity, remained immersed in
  Slavic literature and music, and continued to
  speak his native language with his wife.

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August MackeIn the Storm

• August Macke was a close friend of Franz Marc. In
  1912 the two painters visited Paris. In 1914 he
  made another trip, this time to Tunisia in
  Northern Africa with Paul Klee.
• Macke was often critical of the Blue Rider group
  in a humorous way.

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August MackeIn the Garden Gate

• In 1914 he had to join the German army and was
  killed in action. He was only 27 years old.

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Gabriele Munter

• Gabriele Munter had met Wassily Kandinsky in
  Munich and the two became companions.
• In 1909 she bought a little house in the scenic
  Bavarian foothills outside Munich. Here Gabriele
  Munter and Kandinsky spent the summer months. The
  house soon became a meeting point for the artists
  of The Blaue Reiter group.

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Theosophy Philosophical or Religious Teaching

• Kandinsky and Munter believed in Theosophy
  philosophical or religious teaching based on a
  mystical insight into the nature of God and the
  world through direct knowledge, philosophical
  speculation, or a physical process, such as
  painting.
• His belief in the spiritual power of art was
  related to his adherence to certain doctrines of
  theosophy, a cause that promoted deeper spiritual
  reality through intuition, meditation, and other
  transcendental states.
• Theosophy influenced numerous late nineteenth
  early twentieth century artists. The Theosophical
  Society, with which theosophy is now generally
  identified, was founded in New York in 1875 by
  Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

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Gabriele Munter In 1914 Kandinsky left Gabriele
Munter.
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Munter and Kandinsky

• During the Nazi era, Gabriele Munter kept dozens
  of paintings by Kandinsky and others hidden in a
  basement room of her house. These and a large
  number of her own paintings were donated by
  Gabriele Munter shortly before her death. Today
  they are the main attraction of the Lenbachhaus
  Museum in Munich.
• Fifty-seven of his works were confiscated by the
  Nazis in the 1937 purge of "degenerate art."
  Kandinsky died December 13, 1944.

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Paul Klee Menacing Head, 1905

• Paul Klee played with forms and colors -
  sometimes abstract, sometimes figurative but
  reduced to the essential.
• His paintings and graphics are small in size,
  nearly miniature.
• In 1933 after the Nazis took power in Germany,
  Paul Klee was dismissed from his position as a
  professor of the Art Academy in Dusseldorf and
  went back to Switzerland.

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Paul Klee Temple Garden
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Heinrich Campendonk-1889-1957

• Man and Beast Amidst Nature
• He fled from the Nazis to Holland where he worked
  as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts.

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Alfred Kubin-(Czech) 1877-1959

• Alfred Kubin's works of art are much different
  from the colorful works of his friends of The
  Blue Rider group.
• His art is somber and nightmarish. Alfred Kubin's
  subjects are often apocalyptic. He was a loner in
  his art and his personality. His favorite media
  was ink drawing mixed with watercolor. Alfred
  Kubin was the only artist of the group who was
  not outlawed by the Nazis.
• The Torch of War-1914

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Marcs Peaceful Animals

• Man plays only a small part in Marc's work.
• He wrote that the irreligious humanity which
  lived all around me did not excite my true
  feelings, whereas the virgin feeling for life of
  the animal world set alight everything good in
  me.
• Animals are central in his work.
• At first they are symbols of nature, but later
  they become the messengers of a higher spiritual
  world.

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Marcs Peaceful Animals
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Marcs Peaceful Animals
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Marcs Peaceful Animals
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Marcs Peaceful Animals
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Marcs Peaceful Animals
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The Wolves (Balkan War)

• By 1913, however, Marc sensed the impending
  disaster of world events. The Wolves (Balkan War)
  is a personal allegory of the 1912-13 War that
  ultimately led to World War I. He no longer used
  peaceful and gentle animals like horses and deer
  instead, he presents a pack of wolves.

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Killed in action at Verdun in 1916

• He was killed in action at Verdun in 1916, hit in
  the temple by a grenade splinter on a
  reconnaissance ride - on a horse.
• Marc was killed in World War I at the age of
  thirty-six, but not before he had created some of
  the most memorable paintings of the Expressionist
  Movement.

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Klee painted mourning painting

• Marcs wife was staying with the Klees when the
  news of his death came.
• The text reads --"Once emerged from the gray of
  night,Then heavy and precious and strong from the
  fire
• In the evening filled with God and bowed...
• In the gray band Ethereally now rained round
  with blue, floating off over mountains snowcaps
  to wise constellations."

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Der Blaue ReiterApocalyptic Vision

• Their apocalyptic vision suggests his
  metaphysical desire to push "behind the veil of
  appearance" to the "other side" to seek "the
  hidden things in nature . . . the inner spiritual
  side of nature."

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Exuberant Colors, Emotions, and Spiritual States

• They shared an interest in abstracted forms and
  prismatic colors, which, they felt, had spiritual
  values that could counteract the corruption and
  materialism of their age.
• The name Blaue Reiter (blue rider) refers to a
  key motif in Kandinskys work the horse and
  rider, which was for him a symbol for moving
  beyond realistic representation. The horse was
  also a prominent subject in Marcs work, which
  centered on animals as symbols of rebirth.