Neue Wilde

Neue Wilde ("New Wild Ones") is a term used in Germany for Neo-Expressionism, the turbulent revival of expressive painting in the late 1970s and 1980s. The name alludes to the "wild ones" — the Fauves of the early century — and emphasizes the spontaneity, energy, and emotional immediacy of a new generation of artists. After decades dominated by Conceptualism, Minimalism, and abstraction, young painters returned to figuration, vivid color, broad impasto brushwork, and large formats. In Germany the movement had two centers: the Berlin circle with figures such as Rainer Fetting and Helmut Middendorf, and the Cologne scene around Walter Dahn and Hans Peter Adamski. Neue Wilde painting was often autobiographical, urban, nocturnal, and saturated with motifs of subculture and music. The movement paralleled the Italian Transavantgarde and American Neo-Expressionism, becoming part of a wider international return to painting in the 1980s.