German expressionism

German Expressionism was a stylistic movement of the early twentieth century in which the depiction of reality was deliberately distorted in order to express the artist's inner feelings, ideas and spiritual states. In contrast to Naturalism and Impressionism, which aimed to reproduce what was seen, the Expressionists sought to convey what was felt: anxiety, alienation, ecstasy and social criticism. To this end they used harsh, often discordant colours, deformed shapes, sharp angles and vigorous, brutal brushwork. The movement developed chiefly in two centres: the Dresden group Die Brücke (The Bridge), led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, which tended toward primitivism and sharp, sensual imagery, and the Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), which was more lyrical and spiritual. Other important figures were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Oskar Kokoschka. German Expressionism embraced not only painting and drawing but also woodcut, sculpture, literature, theatre and cinema. It reflected the crisis of European consciousness before and after the First World War and became one of the cornerstone tendencies of modernism, deeply influencing the later development of twentieth-century art.