In contrast to Fauvism, Expressionism developed in rich, multi-faceted directions and for many years influenced the European and American art world. Expressionism implied a lifestyle and did not limit itself to the visual arts. In addition to sculpture and painting, this liberal and unfettered way of interacting with artistic traditions also seized upon architecture, literature, film, music and theatre. Expressionism was more than an artistic movement. Between the turn of the century and World War I, Expressionism came to mean rebellion and the passionate stirring of the young elite. There were numerous cases of artists working in two genres: poets and painters like Ludwig Meidner, Oskar Kokoschka, Else Lasker-Schüler; sculptors and dramatists like Ernst Barlach; composers and painters like Arnold Schönberg. Expressionism was the artist’s answer to a world of increasing regimentation, social tensions, cultural conflicts and psychological burdens. In the essay for Der Blaue Reiter Almanac, Franz Marc wrote:
In our epoch of great struggle for a new art, we as the ‘Wild Beasts’ do not struggle in an organised fashion against an old organised authority. The struggle seems uneven, but in matters of the intellect, numbers are not decisive, but rather the strength of the ideas. The most feared weapon of the ‘Wild Beasts’ is their new way of thinking, which kills better than steel and breaks, what was considered to be unbreakable.
The Expressionists arose against cold mechanism, against the stifling authoritarian mindset. They wanted to do away with artificiality and searched, as the Fauves did, for the origins of human existence. In 1904, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner experienced the magical attraction of the African and South Seas in the anthropology museum in Dresden. Not only was he fascinated by the masks and carved cult figures, but the rites and way of life associated with them fascinated him.
In contrast to the Fauves, who primarily made use of stylistic-decorative elements, the artists of the Brücke focused their interest on the spiritual aspects, the originality and archaic powers of expression. They called themselves the ‘primitives of a new art.’ The goal was to intensify expression to the greatest extent possible and to shatter the ‘natural’ order. Styles were shattered, overextended, split, and colours burned in veritable rivers, even more excitedly than with the Fauves. ‘Empathy’ became the catchword, which the art historian Wilhelm Worringer found to describe this language of expression reaching into the deepest emotions. Franz Marc expressed in word and paint that ‘… pantheistic quality to empathise with the shivering and flowing of blood in nature, with the trees, with the animals, with the air.’
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, After the Bath, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 87 × 95 cm. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
In Dresden, architecture students Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff joined together to form an artists’ association in 1905 under the name Brücke. It was their goal was to overcome the academic way of thinking and acting, to break traditions and ‘pull all the smouldering revolutionary forces over to our side,’ as Schmidt-Rottluff wrote to Emil Nolde. Soon, the painters Otto Mueller, Max Pechstein, and Cuno Amiet from Switzerland also joined. The basic requirement for membership was the ‘extension of the existing values with respect to the overall vision of the inner image.’ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the driving force behind the Brücke, described this in the Brücke platform:
With a belief in development, in a new generation of creators and connoisseurs, we call the entire youth together. […] Everyone belongs to us, who directly and authentically expresses that what he is driven to create.
They wanted, as their name implies, to build a bridge to like-minded people. Erich Heckel was the organiser of the group. So, for a monthly rent of 10 marks, it was he who leased an empty butcher shop, which was used as a common studio in which the first joint exhibition took place. The Brücke artists undertook to do everything together in the same sense as the medieval guilds of cathedral builders. This went so far that during their early period of creativity, their works were difficult to differentiate one from another. They did everything together, they had the same models and learned new techniques together, primarily wood carving, etching and lithography. In the years 1906 to 1912 they published yearly portfolios for their members that have today become a rarity.
In the winter months, the painters met for a ‘15-minute cycle’ where the nude model would change the pose every quarter of an hour. The resulting nude sketches were of great spontaneity but outside the guidelines of academia. From these studies, they developed the subject of the naked person in nature. From 1910 onwards, during the summer months, the painters went together to the Moritzburg lakes, Dangast or Nidden. There in open nature, in the light, air and sun, they felt unbound and free of the constraints of civilisation. They painted landscapes and nudes in the open air. Man and nature were depicted in open and direct colours, and the forms conveyed a cosmic unity. A strong and direct use of colour marked the paintings, as did an aboriginal stiffness of form, inspired by the ‘primitive’ cultures. The manner of painting is bold and impulsive. The style is spontaneous and emotional. Depictions of distance are solely produced by colour. The result is a special flattening of the colour.
Wood cuts fit especially well to this type of Brücke art. The coarsening of the forms and inherent expression due to the material qualities and the hardness and rigid surfaces suited the intentions for a heightening of expressive quality. As one can read in the diary they kept in common, they felt themselves to be ‘aristocrats of the spirit.’ The goal was not uniformity in the style of expression, but rather an ever more intensive search for the origins of the mystical secret of being ‘that stands behind the occurrences and things in the environment’, as Kirchner put it.
At first, Art Nouveau and Symbolism influenced the Brücke artists. An argument ensued with the ecstatically turbulent style of Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin, as well as their subject of man and being. The painters only developed the striking and headstrong signature style of Brücke Expressionism, with its jagged directness, severity and linear simplicity, after they had become familiar with the works of Van Gogh and Cézanne. In honour of Paul Gauguin’s stay in the South Seas, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein left for their own journey to New Guinea and the islands of Palau in 1913 and 1914. Otto Mueller, who came to the Brücke in 1910, was in search of exotic beauty in his Gypsy portraits. With simple, large shapes and clear colours, they wanted ‘the richness, the joy of life, they wanted to paint people in celebrations, their feelings for and with each other. To depict love as well as hate,’ according to Kirchner.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Circus Horse Rider, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 120 × 100 cm. Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
In 1911, Heckel, Kirchner, Pechstein and Schmidt-Rottluff moved to Berlin. Each of the artists now went their own way. Der Sturm, the magazine and gallery, belonging to Herwarth Walden, became the place to turn to for the painters. Walden published Kirchner’s woodcuts for the first time. Together with Erich Heckel, Kirchner took part in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. In 1913, Kirchner had his first exhibition at the Folkwang-Museum in Hagen. However, friction and differences of opinion inside the Brücke finally resulted in its dissolution, but the painters remained lifelong friends.
Before World War I, Berlin developed into the most important centre of culture in Europe alongside Paris, Dresden, and Munich. The prelude to this was the exhibition of Edvard Munch in 1892, which provoked waves of conservative anger. Exhibitions of other contemporaries followed. Progressive art magazines began to appear. Hugo von Tschudi was appointed as director in 1896 to the Nationalgalerie and single-mindedly promoted modernist artists. Bruno Cassirer organised his first Cézanne exhibition in 1901. In 1904, the German Artists’ Association was founded and the next year had its first exhibition