8

I:

Expressionism 1n Germany

~ n its most general sense, "expressionism" is a term

IIJI that has been applied by art historians to tendencies

recurring in the arts since antiquity. The aim of all art is,
of course, to communicate, to express ideas or sentiments
that evoke responses in the viewer. But in the early
twentieth century, the term was applied to art that con"
veyed, through a wide range of styles and subject matter
(or in the case of abstract art, no subject at all), the enlotions an_d spidtual preoccupations of the artist-what Vasily
Kandinsky called "inner necessity." Herwarth Walden,
critic, poet, musician, and the founder in 1910 of the
German avant-garde periodical Der St>trm (The Storm),
drew the distinction between new, revolutim~ary tendencies after the turn of the century and Impressionism.
Expressionist artists, including the Fauves (see chapter 7),
built on the discoveries of the Post-Impressionists, who
rejected Impressionist devotion to optical veracitY' and
turned inward to the world of the spirit. They employed
many languages to give visible form to their feelings, but
generally they relied on simple, powerful forms that were
realized in a manner of direct, sometimes crude expression,
designed to heighten the e1notional response of the viewer.
The essence of their art was the expression Of inner meaning through outer form.
Important forerunners of Expressionism included Van
Gogh, M-q:nch, Klimt, Hodler, Ensor, BOcklin, Klinger,
and Kubin. However, the young ~xpressionists in
Germany also drew inspiration from theit~ own native traditions of medieval sculpture an_d folk or children's art, as
well as the art of other cultures, especially Africa and
Oceania. In contrast to the Fauves, whose stylistic affinities
were never expressed through a formal artistic grouping,
German Expressionism involved the formation of groups
of artists in several cities, primarily Dresden, Munich, and
Berlin. We will see that separate developments also took
place in Vienna. The period of German Expressionism
began in 1905 with the establishment of the new artists'
alliance known as Die Briicke (The Bridge) in Dresden,
and lasted until the end ofWorld War I, when radical Dada

124

artists (see chapter 13) in Germany rejected all forms of

Expressionism in their turn. Many Expressionist artists welcomed World War I as a new dawn that would see the
destruction of an old, moribund order. But as the horror in
the trenches dragged on, the war took its toll on artists:
some died in battle; others suffered psychological trauma
and profound spiritual disillusionment.

Making it Personal: ModersohnBecker and Nolde

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) was born in
Dresden and settled il'l the artists' colony at Worpswede
near Bremen in 1897. Although she was not associated
with any group outside of the provincial school of painters
at Worpswede, Modersohn-Becker was in touch with new
developments in art and literature through her friendship
with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (who had been Rodin's
secrd'kry), as well as through a number of visits to Paris. In
these she discovered successively the French Barbizon
painters, the Impressionists, and then, in 1905 and 1906,
the works ofVan Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne. Following
this last trip, she embarked on a highly productive and
ilmovative period, distilling and simplifying forms while
heightening the expressiveness of color. In her extensive
letters and diaries, the artist wrote of her desire for an art
of direct emotion, of poetic expression, of simplicity ~nd
sensitivity to natme: "Personal feelil1g is the main thing.
After I have clearly set it down in form and color, I must
introduce those elements from nature that will make my
picture look natural." She worried about the implications
of maniage and motherhood for her professional life
and, tragically, died prematurely following the birth of her
only child, leaving us with only a suggestion of what she
might have acllleved. But in works such as Self-Portrait
with Camellia Branch (fig. 8.1) there is a clear grasp of the
broad simplification of color areas she had seen in Gauguin
as well as in the Egyptian and early classical art she had
studied at the Louvre.

8.1 Paulo ModersohnBecker, Sell-Portrait

with Camellia Branch,
1907. Oil on
paperboard, 27li X
Ill::" (62 X 30 em).

Museum Folkwang,
Essen, Germany.

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) was the son of a furmer from

northwestern Germany, near the Danish border. The reactionary, rural values of this area had a profound effect on
his art and his attitude toward nature. Strong emotional
ties to the landscape and yearning for a regeneration of the
German spirit and its art characterized the popular viJ'lkisch
or nationalist tradition. Early in his career, Nolde depicted
the landscape and peasants of this region _irt paintings

reminiscent of the French artist Millet (see fig. 1.19). As an

adult, he even took as his surname Nolde, the name of his
native village (he was born Emil Hansen), to underscore a
strong identification with the land.
As a youth, Nolde studied woodcarving and worked for
a time as a designer of furniture and decorative arts in
Berlin. His first paintings? of mountains nansfonned into
giants or hideous trolls? drew on qualities of traditional
Germanic fantasy. The commercial success of some of these
images enabled Nolde to return to school and to talce up
painting seriously in Munich) where he encotmtered the
work of contemporary artists such as Adolph Jylenzel and
Arnold Bocklin (see fig. 5.24), and then in Paris. While in
Paris in 1899-1900, he, like so many art students, worked
his way gradually fiom the study ofDaumier and Delacroix
to Manet and the Impressionists, and his color took on a
new brilliance and violence as a result of his exposure to the
latter. In 1906 he accepted an invitation to become a member of the Dresden group Die Btiicke. Essentially a solitary
person, Nolde left Die Briicke after a year and devoted
himself increasingly to a personal forl}1 of Expressionist
religious paintings and prints.
,,. Among his first visionary religious paintings was The
Jl'ast Supper of 1909 (fig. 8.2). When compared with celel:lrated old master paintings of Jesus among his disciples,
such as Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus or even Leonardo
da Vinci's Last Supper, Nolde's mood is markedly different
from the quiet restraint of these earlier works. His figures _
are crammed into a practically nonexistent space, the red
of their robes and the yellow-green of their faces flaring
like torches out of the surrotmding shadow. The Lees

8.2 E,;;TI Nolde, The Last

Supper, 1909. Oil on canvas,
33,; X 42W' (86 X 107 em).
Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen.

CHAPTER 8 ' EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

125

themselves are skull-like masks that derive from the carnival processions of Ensor (see fig. 5.23). Here, however,
they are given intense personalities-no longer masked and
inscrutable farrtasies but individualized human beings passionately involved in a situation of extreme drama. The
compression of the group packed within the fi:ontal plane

of the painting-again stemming from Ensor-heightens

the sense of impending crisis.

Nolde believed in the ethnic superiority of Nordic people. In 1920 he became a member ofd1e National Socialist
or Nazi party. His art was for a time tolerated by Joseph
Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, but by 1934
it was officially condemned by the Nazis as stylistically too
experimental-"primitive" and "un-German." In 1936,
like other Expressionist artists in Germany, he was banned
from working. Over one thousand of Nolde's works were
among the sixteen thousand sculptures, paintings, prints,
and drawings by avant-garde artists that were confiscated
from German musemns by Nazi officials. In 1937 many
of these were included in a massive exhibition called
"Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art" (see fig. 13.44).
Designed to demonstrate the so-called decadent art that
offended d~e Nazi government, which preferred watereddown classicist depictions of muscular Aryan worker~~
pretty nudes, or insipid genre scenes, the exhibition COll:-l_
tained art in a tremendous range of styles and featured
work by most of the artists discussed in this chapter.
During four months in Munich, the exhibition was seen by
two 1nillion visitors, a staggering attendance even by the
standard of today's "blockbuster" exhibitions. 1'vL'1ny of the
works exhibited, including several by Nolde, were later
destroyed by the Nazis, or lost during World War II.

::I
, ,

Joining the Revolution: Die Brucke,

In 1905 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff; and Fritz Bleyl formed an association
iliey called Die Briicke-the bridge linking "ali ilie revolutionary and fermenting elements." These young architecture students, all of whom wanted to be painters, were
drawn together by their opposition to the art that surrounded them, especially academic art and fashionable
Impressionism, rather than by any preconceived progra'm.
Imbued wiili the spirit of Arts and Crafts and Jugendstil
(see chapter 5), they rented an empty shop in a workers'
district of Dresden, in eastern Germany, and began to
paint, sculpt, and make woodcuts together. The influences
on then~ were many and varied: the art of medieval
Germany, of d~e French Fauves, ofEdvard MlUKh, of nonWestern sculpture. For rl1e1~ Van Gogh was the clearest
example.of an artist driven by an "im1er force" and "inner
necessity"; his paintings presented an ecstatic identification
or empathy of the artist with the subject he was interpreting. The graphic works of Munch were widely known in
Germany by 1905, and ilie artist himself was spending
most of his time there. His obsession with symbolic
J 26 CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

subjects struck a sympathetic chol'd in youug German

artists, and from his mastery ofd1.e graphic techniques they
could learn much. Ald1ough they worked in many medi.:'l,
it was probably their intensive study of the possibilities
of woodcut that did most to formulate their styles and to
clarifY their directions. Among historic styles, the most
exciting discovery was art from Afiica and the South
Pacific, of which notable collections existed in the Dresden
Ethnographic Museum~
In 1906 Nolde and Max Pechstein joined Die Brl\cke.
In the same year Heckel, then working for an architect,
persuaded a manufacturer for whom he had executed a
showroom to permit d1e Brli.cke ar~ists to exhibit there.
This was the historic first Bri.icke exhibition, which
marked the emergence of twentieth-century German
Expressionism. little information about the exhibition has
survived, since no catalogue was issued, and it attracted
virtually no attention.
During the next few years the Bri.i.cke painters exhibited
together and produced publications designed by members
and manifestos in which Kirchner's ideas were most evident. The human figure was studied assiduously in. d1e way
Rodin had studied d1e nude: not posed formally but simply existing in the envirmm1ent. Despite developing differences in style among the artists, a hard, Gothic angularity
permeated many. of their works.
The Brli.cke painters were conscious of the revolution
that the Fauves were creating in Paris ?-nd were aft"Ccted by
their use of color. However, their: own paintings maintained a Germanic sense of expressive subject matter and a
chamcteristically jagged, Gothic stru~ture and form. By
1911 most of the Bri.icke group were in Berlin, where a
new style appeared in their works, reflecting the increasing
consciousness ofFrench Cubism (see cl1apter 10) as well as
Fauvism, given a Germanic excitement and narrative
impact. By 1913 Die Briicke was dissolved as an association, j1nd the artists proceeded individually.

Kirchner
The -most creative member of Die Briicke was Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner ~(1880-1938). In addition to his
extraordinary output of painting and prints, Kirchner, like
Erich Heckel, made large, roughly hewn and painted
wooden sculptures. These works in a primitivist mode were
a result of the artists' admiration for Mrican and Oceanic
art. Kirchner's early ambition to become an artist was reinforced by his discovery of the sixteenth-century woodcuts
of Albrecht Diirer and his Late Gothic predecessors. Yet his
own first woodcuts, done before 1900, were probably
most influenced by Felix Vallotton and Edvard Munch.
Between 1901 and 1903 Kirchner studied architecture in
Dresden, and then, tmtil 1904, painting in Munich . .I--Icrc
he was attracted to Art Nouveau designs and repelled by
the retrograde paintings he saw in the exhibition of the
Munich Secession. Like so many of the younger Genwtn
artists of the time, he was particularly drawn to Geri11<1ll

8.3 Ernst ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 190B !dated 1907 an painting). Oil on canvas, 4' 11 %"
X 2 m). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

6'61!"

11.51

Gothic art. Of modern artists, the first revelation for him "' probably had Munch's street pamtmg Evening on Karl
was the work of Seurat. Going beyond Semat's researches, -!.o ]ohan in mind when he made this .work, and, as was
Kirchner undertook studies of nineteenth-century color
frequently his habit, he reworked it at a much later date.
theories that led him back to Johann Wolfgang von
In Berlin he 'Painted a series of street scenes in which
Goethe's essay History of the Theory of Colors.
tl1e spaces are confmed and precipitously tilted, and the figI<irchner's painting style about 1904 showed influences
ures are elongated into angular shards by l~ng feathered
from the Nco-Impressionists combined with a larger,
strokes. Kirchner made rapid sketches of these street
more dynamic brushstroke related to that of Van Gogh,
scenes, then worked up the image in more formal drawings
whose work he saw, along with paintings by Gauguin
in his studio before making the final paintings. These
and Cezanne, in the exhibition of the Munich Artists'
scenes' strong sense of movement may indicate his borAssociation held that year. On his return to Dresden and
rowing from Italian Futurist painting (see chapter ll), as
architecture school in 1904 Kirchner became acquainted
well as the impact of Cubism, and his distorted Gothic
with Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Bleyl, and with them,
forms express the condition of modern urban life, in which
as already noted, he founded the Brlicke group.
close physical proximity is coupled with extreme psychoFor subject matter Kirclmer looked to contemporary
lOgical distance.
life~landscapes, portraits of fi"icnds, and nudes in natural
If Kirchner's Market Place with Red Tower (fig. 8.4) is
settings-rejecting the artificial trappings of academic
compared with one of the Frencl1 Cubist painter Robert
studios. In both Dresden and Berlin, where he moved in
Delaunay's Eiffel Tower studies, the difference between
1911, he recorded the streets and inhabitants of the city
the German and the Frencl1 vision becomes evident.
and the bohemian life of its nightclubs, cabarets, and
Delaunay's Eiffel Tower in Trees of 1910 (see fig. 10.43)
circuses. Street, Dresden (fig. 8.3) of 1908 is an assembly
represents an expressive interpretation of Cubism in which
of cun~linear figures who undulate like wraiths, moving
the expression is achieved by the dynamism of abstract
toward and away from the viewer without individual
color shapes and lines. Kirchner's Market Place is expressive
motive power, drifting in a world of dreams. Kirchner
in a more explicit way. It reveals the artist's knowledge of
CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

127

,, I
I

1",

:]'

,,

'.. i (
-.

1~\ i
~~

8.4 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Market Place with Red Tower,

1915. Oil on canvas, 47l> X 35lii" (120.7 X 91.1 em).
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.

Cubist works, but uses Cubist geometry with caution,

combining it wid1 defined perspective space distorted in
the manner of Van Gogh for the similar end of creating
a claustrophobic effect of compression-what Kirchner
called the "melancholy of big city streets."
When World War I broke out Kirchner enlisted in the
field artillery, but he suffered a mental and physical breal<.
down and was discharged in 1915. He recuperated in
Switzerland, where he continued to Jive and work near the
town of Davos until his death by suicide in 1938. During
this late period in his career Kirchner continued to renew
his style, painting many of his older themes along with
serene Alpine landscapes and sympathetic portrayals of
Swiss peasant life. The Swiss landscape can be seen through
the window in Kirchner's moving Self-Portrait with Cat
(fig. 8.5), in which the artist's weary countenance betrays
his protracted struggle with illness and depression.

Heckel, Miiller, Pechstein, and Schmidt-Rottluff

Erich Heckel (1883-1970) was a more restrained
Expressionist whose early paintings at their best showed
flashes of psychological insight and lyricism. After 1920 he
turned increasingly to the production of colorful but essentially Romantic-Realist landscapes. A painting such as Two
Men at a Table (fig. 8.6) evokes a dramatic interplay in
which not only the figures but the contracted, tilted space
of the room is charged with emotion. This painting, dedicated "to Dostoyevslcy," is almost a literal illustration from
the Russian novelist's Brothers J(aramazov. The painting of
the tortured Christ, the suffering face of the man at the
le~ the menace of the other-all refer to Ivan's story, in
the novel, of Christ and the Grand Inquisitor.
Using the most delicate and muted colors of all the
Briicke painters, Otto Miiller (1874-1930) created works
that suggest an Oriental elegance in their organization.
His 'hudes are attenuated, awkwardly graceful figures

": i

I
!

8.5 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Se/fPorlraitwith Cat, 1919-20. Oil on

canvas, 47)4 X 33W' (120 X 85 em). Busch-Reisinger Museum,
Harvard Universi!y Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

128 CHAPTER B ' EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

8.6 Erich Heckel, Two Men at a Table, 1912. Oil on canvas,

38~ X 47Xi" (96.8 X 120 em). Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

8.7 Otto Muller, Bathing

Women, 1912. Crayon
on paper, 17% X 13%"
[43.7 X 33.5 em).
Bildarchiv Rheinisches

Museym, Cologne.

whose softly outlined, yellow-ocher bodies blend imperceptibly and harmoniously into the green and yellow
foliage of their setting (fig. 8.7). He was impressed by
ancient Egyptian wall paintings and developed techniques
to emulate their muted tonalities. The unidealized, candid
depiction of nudes in open nature was among the Brikke
artists' favorite subjects. They saw the nude as a welcome
release from nineteenth-century prudery and a liberating
plunge into primal experience. As Nolde proclaimed,
echoing the widely shared, if unwittingly patronizing,
view of "primitive" peoples that was current at the time,
"Primordial peoples live in_ their nature, are one with it and
are a part of the entire universe." The relative gentleness of
Mtiller's treatment of this theme found an echo in the contemporary photographs of the German-born photographer
Heinrich Kiihn (1866-1944), who, like early twentiethcentury modernists in painting, sought to flatten space and
create a more two-dimensional design~a Pictodal effect,
as the photographers would have said-by viewing his
subject or scene li'om above (fig. 8.8).

8.8 Heinrich Kuhn, The Artist's Umbrella, 1910. Photogravure

on heavy woven paper, 9 X 11%" [23 X 28.9 em). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CHAPTER 8 EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

129

Max Pechstein (1881-1953) had a considerable head

start in art by the time he joined Die Briicke in 1906.
He had stndied for several years at the Dresden Academy,
and in general enjoyed an earlier success than the other
Briicke painters. In 1905 he had seen a collection of wood
carvings fiom the Palau Islands in Dresden's ethnographic
museum, and t;hese had a formative influence on his work.
In 1914 he traveled to these islands in the Pacific to study
the art at first hand. Pechstein was the 'most eclectic of
the Briicke group, capable of notable individual paintings
that shifi from one style to another. The early Indian and
Woman (fig. 8.9) shows him at his dramatic best in terms
of the exotic subject, modeling of the figures, and Fauveinspircd color. Pechstein's drawing is sculptural and curvilinear in contrast to that of MUller or Heckel, and it was
not tinged by the intense anxiety that informed so much
of Kirchner's work.
In 1910 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) poruayed himself as the very image of the arrogant young
Expressionist-in a green turdeneck sweater, complete
with beard and monocle, against a roughly painted back~
ground of a yellow doorway flanked by purpli.sh-brown
curtains (fig. 8.10). Aside from Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff
was the boldest colorist of the group, ~ven to vivid blues

,
,\

!"'

'
. '

8.9 M:Jx Pechslein, Indian and Woman, 1910. Oil on

canvas, 32li X 26li" (81.9 X 66.7 em). The SainllDuis
Art Museum.

i
8.10 Karl SchmidtRottluff, Se/FPortrait with
Monocle, 1910. Oil on
canvas, 33)1! X 30"

(84.1 X 76.2 em).

Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Preussischer

Kulturbesitz,
Nationalga\erie.

' i
''!

130 CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

cdmsons, yellows and greens, juxtaposed in jarring but

dissonance. Although never a fully abstract
he was probably the metnber of Die Brliclce who
furthest and most convincingly in the direction of
structure. Schmidt-Rottluff had been tr~mmatized
his service in Russia during World War I, and was later
cornrr1issior1ed to redesign the imperial German eagle, casts
which were placed on buildings throughout Germany.
tllls service to his country, when the Nazis came to
he was dismissed from his position as professor of art
Berlin in 1933 and forbidden to work. His SelfPortrait
Monocle was seized from the museum that had
orcmi 1edit in 1924 and included in the 1937 Degenerate
show staged by the Nazis.

the principal contributions of German

EJcpres>:ioJ:tism was the revival of printmalcing as a major
of art. During the tllneteenth century a large number
experimental painters and sculptors had made prints,
toward the end of the century, in the hands of artists
Toulouse-Larmec (see fig. 3.29), Gauguin, Redan,
Klin>er, and Ensor, printmaking assumed an_llnportance as
8;..11 Lovis Corinth, Death and the Artist, from the Totentanz
independent art form beyond anything that had existed
(Dance of Death) series, 1921 . Soft-ground etching and
the Renaissance. Several early twentieth-century
drypoint on Japanese paper, plate 9>' X 7" (24 X 17.8 em),
outside Germany-Picasso, Munch, Rouault-were
sheet 1 I% X 9%" [30 X 24.7 em). National Gallery of Art,
in1pc>rt:mt printmakers as well as painters. In Germany,
Washington, D.C.
'hcJw,cve:r, a country with a particularly rich tradition of
printmaking, this art form occupied a special place, and
revival contributed to the character of painting and
His Prophet of 1912 owes something to Late Gothic
sc:uljJtlilrC. Expressionist artists sought a direct engagem_ent
German woodcuts as well as the prints of Mtmch, with
their materials and adapted their technique to the c' its intense black-and-white contrast and bold, jagged
:e>dg<,ncies of the medium in order to achieve maximum '' shapes that exploit the natural grain of the woodblock. His
expressive power. It was especially the simplified forms
lithographs, which differ in expression from the rugged
of the woodcut, a form of plintmaking with a long and
forms of this Woodcut, include Female Dancer (fig. 8.12),
dilltirlgL1isl1ed history in Gcnnan art, that they felt conone of the greatest of all German Expressimllst prints.
most authentically the desired emotion. The artists
Nolde appreciated the artistic fieedom afforded him by
Die Briicke brought about a veritable renaissance of
the lithographic meditm1, which he used in experimental
medium.
ways, brushing ink directly on the stone printing matrix
Considerably older than these artists, the painter and
to create thin, variable washes of color. He was interested
prinunakcr Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) formed a link
in tl1.e body as an expressive vehicle, and had made sketches
between German Romanticism and later German
in the theaters and cabarets of Berlin, as had Kirchner.
Expressionist art. In his lengthy academic training in
But the sense of frenzied emotion and wild abandon in
Germany and France he learned that a firm grotmding in
Female Dancer evokes associations 'With some primal
draftsmanship was fundamental to his art. Like his favorite
ritual rather than with urban dance halls. Nolde had
artist, Rembrandt, one of Corinth's preferred subjects was
studied the work of non-European cultures in tnuseums
his own fuce, which he explored in Death and the Artist
such as the Berlin Ethnographic Musemn, concluding that
(fig. 8.11). This print belongs to his series Dance of Death,
Oceanic and African art possessed a vitality that much
his interpretation of a medieval theme that reminds us of
Western art lacked. He argued for their study as objects
our own inevitable mortality. Although Corinth made
of aesthetic as well as scientific interest and made drawings
Woodcuts occasionally, he favored lithography, etching,
of objects that were then incorporated into his still-life
and especially drypoint, a technique that produces a rich,
paintings. In 1913, shortly after making this lithograph,
velvety line.
Nolde joined an official ethnographic expedition to
. Of the Bri.iclce group, Nolde was already an_ accomNew Guinea, then a Gennan colony in the South Pacific,
plished etcher by the time he made his first woodcuts.
and later traveled to East Asia. He made sketches of
CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

131

8.12 Emil Nolde, Female Dancer, 1913. C~lor lithograph, 20% X 27W' (53 X 69 em). NoldeStiftung SeebUII, Germany.

,,'''

'i

,'I'

the landscapes and local inhabitants on his journeys,

from which he returned highly critical of European
colonial practices.
Kirchner, in both black-and-white and color woo<!,cuts,
developed an intricate, linear style that looked back to the
woodcuts of DUrer and Martin Schongauer. In a powerful
portrait of the Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry van
de Velde, he used characteristic V-shaped gouges to create
complex surface patterns. By contrast, Heckel's color
woodcut .Standing Child (fig. 8.13) is a spare composition.
Heckel's adolescent subject was a girl named Friinzi, who,
with her sister Marcella, was a favorite model of the Briiclce
group. The artist reserved the color of the paper fur the
model's skin and employed d1ree woodblocks-for black,
green, and red inks-in the puzzle technique invented by
Munch (see fig. 5.20), for the brilliant, abstracted landscape behind her. It is a gripping image for its forthright
design and the frank, precocious sexuality of the sitter.
Like Nolde, Pechstein chose dance as his subject for
a color woodcut of 1910 (fig. 8.14), a work he may have
been inspired to make after seeing a Somali dance group
perform in Berlin that year. The dancers are portrayed
against a colorful backdrop that resembles the kind of
hangings with which the Brlicke artists decorated their studios. Pechstein sought a deliberately crude execution here,

132 CHAPTER 8 ,,EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

!i

8.13 Erich Heckel, Standing Child, 1910. Color woodcut,

14% X 10%" [37.5 X 27.5 em). Los Angeles County Museum
of Art.

8.14 Max Pechstein,

Somali Dancers, 1910.
Hand-colored woodcut,
12~X 14%'[31.8X
36.5 em). BruckeMuseum, Berlin.

schematically hewn figures and a surface covered with

.imoguhr smudges ofink.
IGithe Kollwitz (1867-1945) devoted her life and her
both plintmaking and sculpture, to a form of protest
social criticism. She was the first of the Geiman Social
Re:alists who developed out of Expression.ism dming and
World War I. Essentially a Realist, and powerfully
.COJrrcerm:d with the problems and sufferings of the under>ri11i.lege<i, she stands somewhat aside from Die Briicke or
Expressionists, such as Kandinslcy or Der Blaue
When she married a doctor, his patients, predomthe industrial poor of Berlin, became her models.
As a woman, Kollwitz had been prevented from studyat the Academy, so she attended a Berlin art school
women. There she was introduced to the prints and
of Max Klinger and decided to take up printmalcrather than painting. The graphic media appealed to
Kollwi'1tz for their ability to convey a message effectively
to reach a wide audience, because each image could be
~ucw many times. Like Klinger, she produced elaborate
cycles on a central theme. Such is the case with Death
a Woman (fig. 8.15), which belongs to her last
series of lithographs. Kollwitz bad first explored the
of a mother cradling her dead child much earlier and
had no doubt witnessed such loss among her husband's
patients. But the death of her youngest son (who,
poignantly, had served as an infant model in th_e earlier
Works) in World War I transformed the subject into one of
personal tragedy.

"

8.15 Kothe Kollwilz, Death Seizing a Woman [1934) from

the series Death, 1934-36. lithograph, printed in black,
composition: 20 X 14'lio" [50.8 X 36.7 em). The Museumof
Modern Art, New York.

CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

133

8.16 Kothe Kollwitz,

Female Nude

with

Green Shawl Seen

bm Behind, 1903.
Color lithograph,
sheet 23~ X lBW'

(59.7 X 47 em).
Staotliche
Kunstsamm\ungen,

Dresden.

Although best !mown fur her black-and-white prilits and

posters of political subjects, Kollwitz could he an exquisite
colorist. Her lithograph of a nude woman (fig. 8.16), with
its luminous atmosphere and quiet mood, so unlike her
declarative political prints, demonsu-ates her extraordinary
skill md sensitivity as a ptintmalcer.

The Spiritual Dimension:

Der Blaue Reiter
The Briicke artists were th_e first manifestation of
Expressionism in Germany but not neccssalily the most significant. While they were active, first in Dresden and then
in Berlin, a movement of more far-reaching implications
was germinating in Munich around one of the great personalities of modern art, Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944).

Kandinsky
Born in Moscow, Kandinslcy studied law and economics at
the University of Moscow. Visits to Paris and an exhibition
of French painting in Moscow aroused his interest to the
point that, at the age of thirty, he refused a professorship
of law in order to study painting. He then went to Munich,

134

CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

where he was soon caught up in the atmosphere of Art

Nouveau and Jugendstil then permeating the city.
Sine~ 1890, Munich had been one of the most active
centers of experimental art in Europe. Kandinslcy was soon
taldng a leading part in the Munich art world, even while
undergoing the more traditional discipline of study at the
Academy and with older artists. In 1901 he funned a new
artists' association, Phalanx, and opened his own art school.
In the same year he was exhibiting in the Berlin Secession,
and by 1904 had shown works in d1e Paris Salon
d'Automne and Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts. That
year the Phalanx had shown the Neo-Impressionists, as well
as Ceza.tme, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. By 1909 Kandinsky
was leading a revolt against the est<~blished Munich art
movements that resulted in the formation of the Neue
Ki:insder Vereinigung (NI<V, New 1\J.tists Association). In
addition to Kandinsky, the Nl<V included Alexej von
Jawlensky, Gabriele Miinter, Alfred Kubin, and, later, Franz
Marc. Its second exhibition, in 1910, showed the works not
only of Ger~~.ns but also of leading Parisian experimental
painters: Picasso, Braque, Rouault, Derain, and Vlaminck.
During dlls period, K.andinsky was explming revolutionary ideas about nonobjective or abstract painting, that

painting without literal subject matter, that does not

worked in a painterly, improvisatory, Expressionist, biomorphic manner that has had many illustrious heirs, fi:om
take its form from the observed world. He traced the
the Surrealist art of Andre Masson, Joan Mir6, and Matta
: br:girrnir1gs of this interest to a moment of epiphany he had
to the environmentally scaled compositions of Jades on
exe>erienc:edin 1908. Entering his studio one day, he could
make out any subject in his painting, only shapes and
Pollock and beyond, to many contemporary practitioners
:he then realized it was turned on its side. In 1911 a
of gestural pairiting.
in the NKV resulted in the secession of Kandinsky,
As he was moving toward abstraction, the early
paintings
of IZ:nndinsky went through various stages of
.acc:orrrpanir:d by Marc and Miinter, and the formation of
association Der Blane Reiter (The Blue Rider), a name
Impressionism and Art Nouveau decoration, but all were
characterized by a feeling for color. Many also had a fairyfiom a book published by Kandinsky and Marc,
tale quality of narrative, reminiscent of his early interest in
had in turn taken its name from a painting by
Russian folktales and mythology. Kandinsky pursued this
JZ:rndlim:ky. The historic exhibition held at the Thannhauser
line of investigation in the rural setting of the Bavadan
Gallery in Munich in December 1911 included works by
village of Murnan, wlrere he lived for a time with Gabriele
IZ:rndinsky, Marc, August Macke, Heinrich Campendonck,
Munter. Munter took up Hinterglasmalerei (painting
: Mi.inter, the composer Arnold SchOnberg, the Frenchmen
Henri Rousseau and Robert Delaunay, and others. Paul
behind glass), a local form of folk art in which a painting is
aheady associated with the group, showed with them
done on the underside of a sheet of glass, and Kandinsky
a graphics exhibition in 1912. This was a much larger
followed her exan1ple. The arcl1aism of the style and its
show. The;: entries were expanded to include artists of Die
spiritual purity forecast the more radical simplifications
cBrticl,eand additional French and Russian artists: Roger de
soon to come. Like his contemporaries in Germany and
L'l Fresnaye, Kazimir Malevich, and Jean Arp, an Alsatian.
France, Kandinsky was interested in native Russian art
forms and in 1889 had traveled on an ethnographic expedIn his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published
in 1911, IZ:rndinsky formulated the ideas that had obsessed
ition to study the people of Vologda, a remote Russian
him since his student days in Russia. Always a serious stuffi.~ovince north of Moscow. He was moved by the interiors
he had devoted much time to the question of the
qf the peasants' houses, which were filled with decorative
'
painting
and, furniture. "I learned not to look at a picture
rellations between art and music. He had first sensed the
from outside," he said, "but to move within the picture, to
demateriali~ation of the object in the paintings of Monet,
live in the picture."
this direction in art continued to innigue him as,_
t!rnJu!;h exhibitions in Munich and his continual travels,
Because of his wish to associate his work with an imagelearned more about the revolutionary new discoveries
free art form that spoke directly to the senses in modernist
Neo-Impressionists, the Sy1nbolists, the Fauves, and
fashion, IZ:nndinsky began using titles derived from music,
Cubists. Advances in the physical sciences had called
such as "Composition," "Improvisation," or "ImpressiOn."
question the "reality" of the world of tangible objects,
He made ten major paintings titled "Composition," which
.trr:n1;thening his conviction that art had to be concerned c\, he considered to be his most complete artistic statements,
the expression of the spiritual rather than the matedal.
expressive of what he called "i1mer neces_~!ty" or the artist's
his strong scientific and legal interests,
lZ:n1dinsl<:pvas attracted to Theosophy, spiritism,
the occult. There was always a mystical core
his thinking--wmething he at times attribto his Russian roots. This sense of an inner
force, a product of the spirit rather than
external vision or manual skill, enabled him
arrive at an art entirely without representaother than colors and shapes. Deeply conwith the expression of harmony in visual
he wrote, "The harmony of color and
must be based solely upon the principle of
proper contact with the human soul." And
so, along with Franti.Sek Kupka, Delaunay, Piet
Mondrian, and Malevich, Kandinsky was one of
the first, if not-as traditionally thought-the
Very first, modern European artist to brealc
through the representational barrier and carry
painting into total abstraction. But while other
8.17 Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch For Composition II, 1909-10. Oil on canvas,
pioneers of pictorial nonobjectivity worked in
38% X 51%" (97.5 X 131 .5 em). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
a Cubist-derived geometdc mode, Kandinsky
New York.
CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

135

intuitive, emotional response to the world. A close examination of Sketch for Composition II(fig. 8.17) reveals that
the artist is still employing a pictorial vocabulary filled with
standing figures, riders on horseback, and onion-domed
churches, but they are now highly abstracted forms in the
midst of a tumultuous, upheaving landscape of mountains
and trees that Kandinsky painted in the high-keyed color of
the Fauves. Although Kandinsky said this painting had no
theme, it is clear that the composition is divided into two
sections, with a scene of deluge and disturbance at the left
and a garden of paradise at the right, where lovers recline
as they had in Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre (see fig. 7.6).
Kandinsky balances these opposing forces to give his allembracing view of the universe.
In general, Kandinsky's cmnpositions revolve around
themes of cosmic conflict and renewal, specifically the Deluge from the biblical book of Genesis and the Apocalypse
fi:om the book of Revelation. From ~uch cataclysm would
emerge, he bdieved, a rebirth, a new, spiritually cleansed
world. In Composition VTI(fig. 8.18), an enormous canvas
frmn 1913, colors, shapes, and lines collide across the pictmial field in a fiuiously explosive composition. Yet even in
the midst of this symphonic arrangement of abstract for~s,
the characteristic motifs Kandinsky had distilled over tile
years can still be deciphered, such as the glyph of a boat wifh

three oars at the lower left, a sign of the biblical floods. Be

did not intend these hieroglyphic forms to be read literally,
so he veiled them in washes of brilliant color. Though the
artist carefully prepared tllis large work with many preliminary drawings and oil sketches, he preserved a sense of
spontaneous, unpremeditated fieedom in the final painting,
In 1914 the cataclysm ofWorld War I forced Kandinsky
to return to Russia, and, shortly thereafter, another phase
of his career began (discussed in chapter l l ), a pattern
repeated in the careers of many artists at this time. In looking at the work of the other members of Der Blaue Reiter
up to 1914, we should recall that the individuals involved
were not held together by common stylistic principles but
rather constituted a loose association of young artists,
enthusiastic about new expedmcnts and united in their
oppositions. Aside from personal friendships, it was
Kandinsky who gave the group cohesion and direction.
The yearbook Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Kandinsky and
Franz Marc, appeared in 1912 and served as a forum for
the opinions of the group. The new experiments of Picasso
and Matisse in Paris were discussed at length, and the aims
and conflicts of the new German art associations were
described. In the creation of the new culture and new
approach to painting, much importance was attached to
the influence of so-called primitive and naive art.

8.18 Vosily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913. Oil on canvas, 6'6%" X 9' 1 1W (2 X 3 m). Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

136

CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

8.19 Franz Marc, The Large Blue

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Hwes, 1911. Oil on canvas, 41% X 71l1o" [105.7 X 181.1 em).

Marc
Of the Blane Reiter painters, Franz Marc (1880-1916)
was the closest in_ spirit to the traditions of German
Romanticism and lyrical naturalism. In Paris in 1907 he
sought personal solutions in_ the paintings of Van Gogh,
whom he called the most authentic of painters. From an
early date he turned to the subject of animals as a source of
spiritual harmony and purity in nature. This became for
him a symbol of that more primitive and arcadian life
sought by so many of the Expressionist painters. Through
his fiiend the painter August Macke, Marc developed, in
about 1910, enthusiasms for color whose richness and
beauty were expressive also of the harmonies he was seeking. The great Blue Horses of 1911 is one of the masterpieces of Marc's mature style (fig. 8.19). The three brilliant
blue beasts are fleshed out sculpturally from the equally
vivid reds, greens, and yellows of the landscape. The artist
used a close-up view, with the bodies of the horses filling
most of the canvas. The horizon line is high, so that th_e
curves of the red hills repeat the lines of the horses' curving flanks. Although the modeling of the animals gives
them the effect of sculptured relief projecting from a Lmiform background, there is no real spatial differentiation
between creatures and environment, except that the sl<j is
rendered more softl}r and less tangibly to create some illusion of distance. In fact, Marc used the two whitish tree
trunks and the green of foliage in front of and behind the
horses to tie foregrotmd and background together. At this
time Marc's color, like that of Kandinsky, had a specifically
symbolic rather than descdptivc function. Marc saw blue as
a masculine pdnciple, robust and spiritual; yellow as a feminine principle, gentle, serene, and sensual; red as matter,
brutal and heavy. In the mi.-Ting of these colors to create
greens and violets, and in_ tl1eir proportions one to the

other on the canvas, the colors formed abstract shapes

di\d took on spiritual or material significance independent
qf the subject.
' Dnring 1911-12 Marc was absorbing the ideas and
forms of the Cubists and finding them applicable to his own
concepts of the mystery and poetry of color. I-Iis approach
to art was religious in a manner that could be described as
pantl1eistic, although it is interesting -tl1at ~ his paintings
only animals are assimilated harmoniously into naturenever humans. Marc, with Macke, visited Delaunay in Paris
in 1912 and saw his experiments with color and form;
in the same year Marc was impressed bran exhibition of
Italian Futurists he saw in Munich. Out of the influences
of Kandinsky,ll of Delaunay's color abstraction, and of the
Futurists' use of Cubist structures, Marc evolved his later
style-which, tragically, he was able to explore for only two
or three more years until he was killed in the war in 1916.
In Stables (fig. 8.20) he combined his earlier cnrvilinear
patterns with a new rectangular geometry. The horses,
massed in the frontal plane, are dismembered-and recomposed as fractured shap~s that are dispersed evenly across
the surface of tl1e canvas. The forms are composed parallel
to the picture plane rather than tilted in depth. This treatment was in accordan_ce witl1 the experiments of Delaunay
in his Sim,ltaneo"s Disk series (see fig. 10.44). At this
stage, however, Marc's paintings were still far less abstract
than Delaunay's, and tl1eir sense of nervous energy made
them akin to the work of the Futurists. Intense but lightfilled blues and reds, greens, violets, and yellows fliel<er
over the structurally and spatially unified surface to create
a dazzling illusion. Marc's use of color at this stage owed
much to Macke, who frequently used the theme of people
reflected in shop windows as a means of distorting space
and nmltiplying images.
CHAPTER B

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

137

8.20 Franz Marc, Stables, 1913-14. Oil on canvas, 29~ X 6214" [74 X 158.1 cml. Soloman R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Unlike Kandinsky's, Marc's imagery was predominantly

derived from the material world. But in a group of small
compos~tions from 1914 and in notebook sketches, there
was evidence of a move to abstraction. Some of his later
works carry premonitions of the world conflict that end~
his life. In a virtually abstract painting, Fighting Forms <jf
1914, Marc returned to curvilinear pattern in a violeiit
battle of black and red color shapes, of light and darkness.
The forms are given such vitality that they take on the
characteristics of forces in an ultimate encounter.

Macke
Of the major figures in Der Blaue Reiter, August Macke
(1887-'1914), despite his close association with and influence on Franz Marc, created work that was as elegantly
controled as it was expressive. Macke, like Marc, was influenced by Kandi.nsky, Delaunay, and the Futurists, and perhaps more immediately by the color concepts of Gauguin
and Matisse. Since he was killed in September 1914, one
month after the beginning ofWorld War I, his achievement
must be gauged by the work of only four years.

8.21 August Macke, Great Zoological Garden, 1912. Oil on canvas, 4'3!1: X 7'6%" [1.3 X 2.3 m). Museum am Ostwall,
Dortmund, Germany.

138

CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

After some Fauve- and Cubist-motivated exercises

semiabstraction, Macke began to paint city scenes in
high-keyed color, using diluted oil paint in effects close to
that of watercolor. Great Zoological Garden, a triptych of
1912 (fig. 8.21), is a loving transformation of familiar
scene into a fairyland of translucent color. Pictorial space
is delimited by foliage and buildings that derive from the
later watercolors of cezanne. The artist moves easily from
passages as abstract as the background architecture to passages as literally representational as the animals and the
foreground figures. Tbe work has a unity of mood that
is light and channing, disarming because of the naive joy
that permeates it.
Macke occasionally experimented with abstract organization, but his principal interest during the last two years of
his life continued to be his cityscapes, which were decorative colored impressions of elegant ladies and gentlemen
strolling in the park or studying the wares in brightly lit
shop windows. In numerous versions of such themes, he
shows his fascination with the mirrorlike effects of windows
as a means of uansforming the perspective space of the
street into the fractured space of Cubism.

in

Jawlensky
Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) was well established
in his career as an officer of the Russian Imperial Guard
before he decided to become a painter. After studies in
Moscow he took classes in the same studio in Munich as
Kandinslcy. Although not officially a member of Der Blane
Reiter, Jawlensky was sympathetic to its aims and continued for years to be close to Kandinslcy. After the war he
formed tl1e group called Die Blane Vier (The Blue Four),
along with Kandinslcy, Klee, and Lyonel Feininger.
By 1905 Jawlenslcy was painting in a Fauve palette,
and his drawings of nudes of the next few years are suggestive of Matisse. About 1910 he settled on his prinlary
theme, the poruait head, which he "explored thenceforward
with mystical intensity. Mme Turandot is an early example
(fig. 8.22), painted in a manner that combines characteristics of Russian folic painting and Russo-Byzantine iconssources that would dominate J awlensky's work.
In 1914 Jawlensky embarked on a remarkable series
of paintings of the human head that occupied him
intermittently for over twenty years. Each of these "mystic
heads" assumed a virtually identical format: a large head
fills the frame, with features reduced to a grid of horizontal and vertical lines and planes of delic;:ate color,
more a schema for a face than an actual visage. In the
twenties Jawlcnsky made a series, Constructivist l;Ieads
(fig. 8.23), in which the eyes are closed, casting an introspective, meditative mood over these images, which,
for the artist, were expressions of a universal spirituality.
Like Kandinsky's compositions, tl1ey were variations on a
theme, but in their restrictive, repetitive structure, they
are closer in spirit to the neoplastic work of Piet Mondrian
(see fig. 17.21). In the mid-thirties the geometry gradually

~-!22 Alexe) von Jawlensky, Mme Turon dot, 191 2. Oi I on

canvas, 23 X 20" [58.4 X 50.8 em). Collection Andreas
JdJwlensky, Locarno, Switzerland.

8.23 Alexej von .Jawlensky, Love, from the Constructivist Heads

series, 1925. Oil on paper, 23~ X 19%" [59 X 49.8 em).
StOdtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

CHAPTER 8 'EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

139

CC:'

loosened, and Jawlensky dissolved the linear structure

into dark, forcefully brushed abstractions that he called
4
Meditations. ''

Klee

<1.'1

:il
.I
'll
:,,i,

Paul !<lee (1879-1940) was one of the most varied,

influential, and brilliant talents in the tvventieth century.
His stylistic development is difficult to trace even after
1914, since the artist, from this moment of maturity, continually reexamined his themes and forms to anive at a
reality beyond the visible world. He developed a visuallan
guage seemingly limitless in its invention and in tl1c variety
of its formal means. His complex language of personal
signs and symbols evolved through private fantasy and a
range of interests :fi:om plant and zoological life to astronomy and typography. Also interested in music, he wanted
to create imagery infused with the rhyduns and counterpoint of musical composition, saying that color could be
played like a "chrmnatic keyboard."
Klee was born in Svyitzerland. The son of a musician, he
was initially inclined toward music, but having decided on
the career of painting, went to Munich to study in_ 1898.
During the years 1903-6 he produced a mm1ber of etch-.,
ings that in_ their precise, hard technique suggest the -1
graphic tradition of the German Renaissance, in their man- i
nered linearity Art Nouveau, and in their mad fantasy a
personal vision reflecting the influence of the Expressionist
printmaker Alfred Kubin. These were also mnong the first
ofKlee's works in which the title formed an integral pmt of

I
. I
I

':I'
I 'I

.1:

',',1

i
i

8.24 Paul Klee, Hammomet with its Masque, 1914.

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 8~ X 7W (20.6 X 19. I em).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

140

CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

his creative work. Klee brought tremendous verbal skill and

wit to his paintings, drawings, and prints, using letters and
words literally as formal devices in his compositions, whlch
he then gave a literary dimension with poetic and often
humorous titles.
Between 1901 and 1905 I<lee traveled extensively
in Italy and France and probably saw works by Matisse.
Between 1908 and 1910 he became aware of Cezanne
Van Gogh, and the beginnings of the mOdern movemen~
in painting. In 1911 he had a solo exhibition at the
Thannhauser Gallery in Munich and in the same year met
the Blaue Reiter painters Kandinslcy, MmT, Macke 1
Jawlensky, and Miinter. Over the next few years he participated in the Blane Reiter exhibitions, wrote for Der Sturm,
and, in Paris in 1912, met Delaunay and saw further paintings by Picasso, Braque, and Henri Rousseau.
He took a trip with Macke to Tunis and other parts of
North Africa in 1914. Like Delacroix and other Romantics
before him, he was affected by the brilliance of the region's
light and the color and clarity of the atmosphere. To catch
tl1_e quality of the scent; Klee, like Macke, turned to watercolor and a form of semiabstract color pattern based on a
Cubist grid, a structure he fiequently used as a linear scaf
folding for his compositions (fig. 8.24). Although he made
lmger paintings, he tended to prefer small-scale works on
paper. Klee had a long and fertile career, the later phases of
which will be traced in chapter 17.

Feininger
Although Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) was born an
American of German-American parents, as a painter he
belongs within tl1e European orbit. The son of distinguished musicians, he was, like Klee, emIy destined for a
musical career. But before he was ten he was drawing his
impressions of buildings, boats, and elevated trains in New
York City. He went to Gennany in 1887 to study music1
but soon turned to painting. In Berlin betvveen 1893 and
1905 Feininger earned his living as an illustrator and caricaturist for German and American periodicals, developing
a brittle, angular style of figure drawing related to aspects
of Art Nouveau, but revealing a very distinCtive personal
sense of visual satire. The years 1906-8, in Paris, brought
him in touch witl1 the early pioneers of modern French
painting. By 1912-13 he had arrived at his own version
of Cubism, particularly the form of Cubism witl1 which
Marc was experimenting at the same time. Feininger
was invited to exhibit with Der Blaue Reiter in 1913. Thus)
not surprisingly, he and Marc shared the sources of
Orphism and Futurism, which particularly appealed to the
Romantic, expressive sensibilities of both. Whereas Marc
translated his beloved animals into luminous Cubist planes)
Feininger continued with his favorite themes of architecture, boats, and the sea. In Harbor Mole of 1913 (fig.
8.25), he recomposed the scene into a scintillating interplay of color facets 1 geometric in outline but given a sense
of rapid change by the transparent, delicately graded color

'

1:

8.25 Lyonel Feininger,

Harbor Mole, 1913. Oil on canvas, 31%

X 39%" (80.6 X 10 I em). Privote collection.

areas. In this work Feininger stated in a most accomplished '"

In 1912 Herwarth Walden opened a galle!y in Berlin
manner the approach he was to continue, with variations, ~ for avant-garde art, the Sturm Galerie, where he exhibited
Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter, Die Briicke and the Italian
throughout the rest of his long life: that of strong, straightline structure played against sensuous and softly lumin_ous
Futurists, ana grouped as French .Expressionists Braque,
color. The interplay between taut linear structure and
Derain, Vlaminck, Auguste Herbin, and others. Also shovvn
Romantic color, lith space constantly shifting between
were Ensor, Klee, and Delaunay. In 1913 came the climax of
the Stunn Galerie's exhibitions, 'the First German AutLm1n
abstraction and representation, created a dynamic tension
in his paintings.
Salon, including three hundred and sixty works. Henri
In 1919 Feininger was invited to join the staff of the
Rousseau's room contained twenty paintings, and almost
Bauhaus, the great experimental German school of archithe entire international range of experimental painting and
tecture mid design. He remained associated with the instisculpture at that moment was shown. Although during and
tution until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933, although
after the war the various activities of Der Stmm lost their
impetus, Berlin between 1910 and 1914 remained a rallying
he had stopped teaching full-time iu the twenties because
point for most of the ne:w European ideas and revolutionthe schedule interfered with his own painting. Feininger's
work steadily developed in the direction he had chosen,
ary movements, largely drrough the leadership ofWalden.
sometimes emerging in shattered architectural images,
sometimes in serene and light-filled structures full of
Self-E:xaminatic:m: Expressionism
poetic suggestion. He ren1rned to the United States in
in Austria
1937 and setded in New York, a difficult move for an artist
who had made his reputation in Europe. Once he was
To understand the various directions in which
"spiritually acclimatized/' as he said, to his new home,
EA'Pressionism moved during and after World War I, we
may look at two mt:ists who were associated in son1e degree
he moved in a new stylistic direction, one less restricted by
with Expressionism in Austria, where its practitioners were
the "straitjacket" of Cubism and charactetized by a fieer
application of color.
never formally organized into a particulm group. Like Klee
CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

141

and Feininger, the Austrians Egon Schiele and Oskar

Kolcoschka each had his highly inclividualized interpretation of the style.

Schiele

I, I'

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) lived a short and tragic life,

dying in the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918. He
was a precocious draftsman and, despite opposition from
his uncle (who was his guardian after his father died insane,
an event that haunted him), studied at the Vienna
Academy of Art. His principal encouragement came from
Gustav Klimt (sec chapter 5), at his height as a painter and
leader of the avant-garde in Vienna when they met in
1907. The two artists remained close, but although Schiele
was deeply influenced by Klimt, he did not fully share his
inclination toward the decorative.
Schiele's many self-portraits rank among his supreme
achievements. They range fi:om self-revelatory documents
of personal anguish to records of a highly self-conscious
and youthful bravado. Schiele, Drawing a Nude Model
before a Mirror (fig. 8.26) demonstrates his extraordinary
natural slcill as a draftsman. The intense portrayal, with the
artist's narrowed gaze and the elongated, angular figure of
the mode~ differs from even the most direct and least
embellished of Klimt's portraits. Here Schiele explores the
familiar theme of the. artist and model, but does so to
create an atmosphere of psychological tension and explicit
sexuality. Schiele's models included his sister Gerti, as well

it~

8.26 Egan Schiele, Schiele, Drawing a Nude

Model before a Mirror, 1910. Pencil an paper,
21% X 1311" (55.2 X 35.2 em). Graphische
Samm\ung Albertina, Vienna.

8.27 Egan Schiele, The Self Seer II (Death and the Man}, 1911.
Oil an canvas, 31% X 31 W (80.3 X 80 em). Private collection.
142 CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

as friends, professional models, and prostitutes. But when,

albeit innocently, in 1912 he sought out children for models in his small village, he was imprisoned for twenty-fom
days for "offenses against public morality."
A comparison of paintings by Klimt and Schiele is
valuable in illustrating both the continuity and the change
between nineteenth-century Symbolism and early twentieth-century Expressionism. Klimt's painting Death and
Life (see fig. 5.6) is heavy with symbolism presented in
terms of the richest and most colorful patterns. Schiele's
The Self Seer II (fig. 8.27), painted in 1911, is comparable
in subject, but the approach could not be more different.
The man (a self-portrait) is rigidly fiontalized in the center
. of the painting and stares out at the spectator. Flis face is a
horrible and bloody mask offear. The figure ofDeatl1 hovers behind, a ghostly presence folding the man in his arms
in a grim embrace. The paint is built up in jagged brushstrokes on figures emerging flom a backgrolmd of harsh
and dissonant tones of ocher, red, and green.
In Schiele's portraiture, other than the commissioned
portraits he undertook occasionally to support himself,
there persisted the same intensity of characterization. But
in his later work the tense linear quality we have seen gave
way to painterly surfaces built up with abundant, expressive
brushwork. In one of his last works Schiele dramatically
portrays his fi:iend, the artist Paris von Giitersloh, with
hands held aloft, fingers spread, as though the hands of the
artist possessed some mysterious, supernatural power.

Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), lilce Schiele, was a product of Vienna, but he soon left the city, which he found
gloomy and oppressive, for Switzerland and Germany,
embracing the larger world of modefn art to become
one of the international figures of twentieth-century
Expressionism. Between 1905 and 1908 Kokoschka worked in the Viennese Art Nouveau style, showing the influence of Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley. Even before going to
Berlin at the invitation ofHerwarth Walden in 1910, he was
instinctively an Expressionist. Particularly in his early "black
portraits," he searched passionately to expose an inner sensibility-which may have belonged more to himself tban to
his sitters. Among his very first images is the 1909 portrait
of his friend, the architect Adolf Loos (fig. 8.28), who
early on recognized Kokoschka's talents and provided llinl
with moral as well as financial support. The figure projects
from- its dark background, and the tension in the contemplative face is echoed in Loos's nervously clasped hands.
The Romantic basis of Kokoschka's early painting appears
in The Tempest(fig. 8.29), a double portrait ofllinlselfwith
his lover, Alma Mahler, in which the tvvo figures, composed
wj.th flickering, light-saturated brushstrokes, are swept
cl'lrough a dream landscape of cold blue mountains and vall~ys lit only by the gleam of a shadowed moon. The painting was a great success when Kokoschka exhibited it in the
1914 New Munich Secession. The year before, he wrote to
Alma about the work, then in progress:

...

29~ X 35l'
(74 X 91.1 em). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie.

8.28 Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Adolf Laos, 1909. Oil on canvas,

CHAPTER 8 , EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

143

., n

8.29 Oskar Kokoschka, The Tempest, 1914. Oil on canvas, 5'11%'' X 7'2%" (1.81 X 2.2 m).
6ffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kuns\museum.

"c
I was able to express the mood I wanted by reliving it ....
Despite all the turmoil in the world, to know that one
person can put eternal trust in another, rl1at two people
can be committed to rl1emselves and other people by an
act of fairl1.

Seriously wounded in World War I, Kokoschka produced little for several years, but his ideas and style were
undergoing constant change. In 1924 he abruptly set
out on some seven years of travel, during which he
explored the problem of landscape, combining free,
arbitrary, and brilliant Impressionist or Fauve color with a

144 CHAPTER 8

EXPRESSIONISM IN GERMANY

traditional perspective-space organization .. Throughout his

long life Kokoschka remained true to the spirit of
Expressibnism-to the power of emotion and the deeply
felt sensitivity to the inner qualities of nature an_d the
hmnan soul. In 1933, in fmancial difficulties, the painter
retmned :fi:om his long travels. He went first to Vie1ma and
then to Prague. During this period his works in public collections in Germany were confiscated by the Nazis as
examples of "degenerate art." In 1938, as World War II
approached, London became his home, and later
Switzerlan_d, although whenever possible he continued his
restless traveling.