Abstract Expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky's masterpiece "Farbstudie Quadrate" Poster - Abstract Squares & Circles on Canvas - Contemporary German Modern Abstract Expressionism in early 20th Century
Farbstudie Quadrate, c.1913 Poster
Kandinsky
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"Life", "the experience of life -- or of imagination", "the innermost essence of life", these are the slogans which accompany the birth of Expressionism, the art movement breaking new ground. When speaking of German Painting "in our time", we realise that the term, as applied to the forces present and active in contemporary art encompasses far more than the creative work of painters. Baumeister, Feininger, Hofer, Nolde, Pechstein and, of the younger generation, Werner Heldt, passed away. But is the influence of the contemporaries of the "older" generation who died earlier -- Beckmann, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Schlemmer -- less present?
Motivated by a common desire to find their creative inspiration in life itself and to submit to the experience of life, three young students of architecture -- Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt- Rottluff -- form the group "Die Bruecke" in Dresden in 1905. They are joined in 1906 by Pechstein and, for one year, by Emil Nolde, and later, in 1910, by the Silesian painter Otto Mueller. The three artists work together in Kirchner's studio, a former cobbler's store which they decorated with their own mural paintings, with batik designs and carvings. They work from life-models, "in free naturalness", comparing one another's styles. They would go out together to the Moritzburger Lakes, to Alsen, Fehmarn, the Dangaster Moore, to the Curish Haff, and paint the lakes, the moores, the bathing people. Blue waters, verdant bushes animated by vermilion and orange coloured nudes: a youthful sense of closeness to nature, a passionate abandon to the intoxicating shades of luminous complementary colours, vitality and the explorer's delight radiate from their paintings.
The emotive character of the Expressionist artist's reaction to the world is traceable in many ways to unsatisfactory emotional relationships with father, teacher, or minister. These difficulties arose from the strictures of family and social life, the rigid hierarchical relationships at home and in public -- in short, the respect demanded for authority as such. In a world unduly dominated by the ideals of Respect, Duty, and Order, the sensitive man's reaction often is explosive and rebellious. The stronger the strictures, the stronger is bound to be the reaction against them.
Yet it is an outstanding characteristic of the Expressionist that he wishes to lose himself in some force or power greater than or outside of himself. As he moves away from the authoritarian pattern of family, school, or art academy, he finds a substitute in self-identification with the forces of nature, the infinite, the otherworldly, symbolized in various ways by the art of Die Bröcke and Der Blaue Reiter. Just as modern man in general, with his sense of isolation, tends to give up his unbearable individuality to a social, economic, or governmental force greater and more reassuring than himself, so the Expressionist writer or artist, fleeing from what to many Germans was a comforting and supporting social pattern, turned to something else to take its place.
The revolutionary element operative at the beginning of our century which has been made the starting point of our discussion, was confined to the "Bruecke" and the "Blaue Reiter" movements. But it was not intended to write a history of the art of that period. If this had been so, Lovis Corinth, for instance, who achieved an Expressionist style beyond Impressionism, or Paula Modersohn-Becker who, though going her own way, never lost touch with her time, would have had to be extensively discussed. The works of the Impressionists projected themselves decisively into the contemporaries' sphere of existence. Whatever "historical" events are referred to, are mentioned only for general guidance.
Art is never merely an illustration of contemporary philosophical and scientific findings; it is analogous to them and often anticipates them. The brief and striking quotaotins from Kant to Heisenberg cited in the opening pages take the place of an historical introduction and are intended to promote a better understanding of our century's changed spiritual situation and to deepen the reader's awareness of the fact that artistic creation is not an esoteric occurrance but the expression of universal spiritual transformations.
