Expressionism

Book excerpt: ""I know for my own part that I have no program, only the inexplicable longing to grasp what I see and feel, and to find for it the purest expression." The words of German Expressionist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, co-founder of the "Brücke" movement in Dresden, convey the essence of the revolutionary movement in the arts which overthrew the stifling academicism of Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany and led in the years between 1900 and 1914 to an amazing upsurge of creative activity. The German Expressionists sought simplified forms, new rhythms, intenser colors. The name which has been given to their movement (not by them) suggests that they were preoccupied with the expression of violent emotion; in fact, however, such artists as the member of the "Brücke" group, Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Pechstein and Nolde, were concerned above all with sheer liberation. Their work, and that of their great contemporaries and associates Marc, Macke, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee and Kubin in Munich; Feininger, Beckmann, Barlach and Meidner in Berlin; and Kokoschka and Schiele in Vienna, all of whom worked in related styles, is a decisive and immensely rich contribution to the history of the twentieth-century art. The story is told here by a senior curator of the Bavarian State art collections largely in the vivid and intensely revealing words of the artists themselves; these he sets in context with rare sympathy and insight."--