Expressionism

Expressionism is a visual language that places at its centre not outward verisimilitude but the subjective experience, inner state and emotional intensity of the artist. Emerging in the German-speaking world in the early twentieth century (the group Die Brücke in Dresden and Der Blaue Reiter in Munich), it opposed the Impressionist recording of an impression with the drive to express anxiety, despair, ecstasy or spiritual longing. Its formal marks are the deformation and sharpening of form, harsh and often dissonant colour, an energetic, nervous brushstroke, thickened contours and dramatic light. Composition is built on tension and instability; space is distorted for psychological effect, and body and face are contorted to lay bare feeling. Edvard Munch, with "The Scream," gave the movement its prototype; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele developed its expressive figuration; Wassily Kandinsky passed through Expressionism on his way to abstraction. In Ukrainian art, kindred inflections are felt in the dramatic colourism of Oleksa Novakivskyi, in the tragic canvases of Anatol Petrytskyi and in the expressive imagery of interwar artists. Expressionism was closely bound to the woodcut, whose sharpness of line matched its emotional strain perfectly. The movement embraced painting, graphic art, literature, theatre and film, becoming the voice of a generation traumatized by modern civilization and war. Its influence nourishes Neo-Expressionism and the whole later tradition of art as confession.