EXPRESSIONISM

IN

ART
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF EXPRESSIONISM

• Is a term that embraces an early 20th century style of art,

music and literature that is charged with an emotional and
spiritual vision of the world.

• is associated with Northern Europe in general and Germany

in particular. The Expressionist spirit has always existed in
the German psyche. Its embryonic forms can be recognized in
the physical and spiritual suffering depicted in
Grünewald's ‘Crucifixion’ above, in the tortured vision of
Martin Schongauer’s engraving of the 'Temptation of Saint
Anthony' below.
 Exaggerated color and
form for the purpose of
expressing emotion.

• Expressionist painters use color to evoke feeling.

(Example - a person's skin may be the color blue to
give the feeling of sadness.)
• Shapes and forms are drawn with emphasis on feeling
at the expense of recording the subjects actual
appearance. (Example- a person may be drawn with
really big hands reaching up to express wonderment.)
PURPOSE OF EXPRESSIONISM
Is to show emotions that the artist feels in hopes that the
viewer will be stirred and feel them as well. The artist is not
concerned with reality as it appears but with its inner
nature and with the emotions aroused by the subject. To
achieve these ends, the subject is frequently caricatured,
exaggerated, distorted, or otherwise altered in order to stress
the emotional experience in its most intense and
concentrated form.
Expressionism Documentary.mp4

VIDE0
PRESENTATION
 PROPONENTS
OF
EXPRESSIONISM
EDVARD MUNCH WASSILY KANDINSKY
Who are the famous proponents of
EXPRESSIONISM?
 Edvard Munch was born in a
farmhouse in the village
of Adalsbruk in Loten, United
Kingdoms of Sweden and
Norway.

• Edvard
Munch
Edvard had an elder sister. Johanne
Sophie, and three younger siblings.
Edvard's mother died of in 1868, as did
Munch's favorite sister Johanne Sophie in
1877. After their mother's death, the Munch
siblings were raised by their father and by
their aunt Karen. Often ill for much of the
winters and kept out of school, Edvard
would draw to keep himself occupied.
In the 1880s, seeking a bohemian lifestyle,
Munch discovered the writings of the
anarchist philosopher, Hans Jæger, head of
a group called the "Kristiania-Boheme" (as
a central principle of a larger anti-bourgeois
agenda, the group advocated liberal sexual
behavior, or "free love," and the abolition
of marriage). Munch and Jæger formed a
close friendship, and Jæger encouraged the
artist to draw more from personal
experience in his work.
Paintings of
Edvard Munch
 The Sick Child (1885-1886), a
somber composition that
served as a memorial to
Munch's deceased sister,
Sophie, speaks to Jæger's
profound influence on Munch
at this juncture. When the
painting was exhibited as A
Study in Kristiania in 1886, it
was attacked by critics as well
as Munch's own colleagues
for its overtly unconventional

• THE SICK CHILD qualities, such as its

scratched paint surface and
the work's generally
unfinished appearance.
 Although this fact is often forgotten,
Munch intended The Scream to be
part of a series, known as the Frieze
of Life. The series dealt with
emotional life, presumably
applicable to all modern humans,
though, in reality, it was applicable
to Munch's favorite subject (Edvard
Munch). Frieze... explored three
different themes -- Love, Anxiety,
and Death -- through sub-themes in
each. The Scream was the final work
of the Love theme and signified

• THE SCREAM
despair. Yes, you read that correctly.
According to Munch, despair was
the ultimate outcome of love. Make
of that what you will.
 Anxiety, created by Edvard Munch, is an
oil painting on canvas. It was created in
1894 and is the style of expressionism.
It’s currently on display in the Much
Museum, which is in Oslo, Norway.
There are a wide array of colors used in
this painting. Munch created a skyline
with oranges and yellows, which lead
into dark purples and backs on the
ground. In the front of the painting are
several people standing in a line on the
Oslo bridge. A woman is in front, but the
people behind her appear male. Many
of the faces in the back are blurred out
and everyone is wearing black with a
hat. Many art critics feel that Anxiety is
closely related to Munch’s more famous
piece, The Scream. The faces show

• THE despair and the dark colors show a

depressed state. Many critics also
believe it’s meant to show heartbreak
and sorrow, which are common
emotions all people feel.
 Wassily Kandinsky is best
known for his work as an
abstract painter. He is a
Russian abstract painter, and
also did work as an art
theorist, and was credited
with being the first artist to
create the first purely abstract
piece of art.

• Wassily Kandinsky
Born in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky only began
painting studies at the age of thirty, which is a
bit later than most artists. Initially, Kandinsky
studied law in Russia, not painting, married, and
came as close as he ever could to settling
down. Kandinsky settled in Munich in 1896, and
studied there for a period of time, Wassily
Kandinsky and the abstract art period, was
followed by a period of development and
maturation, which were based on his previous
artistic creations. But World War I broke up
much of the School of Paris.
In his seminal 1912 publication Concerning
the Spiritual in Art, Wasily Kandinsky
advocated an art that could move beyond
imitation of the physical world, inspiring, as
he put it, "vibrations in the soul." Pioneering
abstraction as the richest, most musical form
of artistic expression, Kandinsky believed that
the physical properties of artworks could stir
emotions, and he produced a revolutionary
group of increasingly abstract canvases - with
titles such as Fugue, Impression, and
Improvisation - hoping to bring painting closer
to music making.
Masterpieces of
Wassily Kandinsky
 Improvisation 31 has a less generalized
title, Sea Battle, and by taking this hint we can
indeed see how he has used the image of two
tall ships shooting cannonballs at each other,
and abstracted these specifics down into the
glorious commotion of the picture. Though it
does not show a sea battle, it makes us
experience one, with its confusion, courage,
excitement, and furious motion. Kandinsky
says all this mainly with the color, which
bounces and balloons over the center of the
picture, roughly curtailed at the upper corners,
and ominously smudged at the bottom right.
There are also smears, whether of paint or of
blood. The action is held tightly within two
strong ascending diagonals, creating a central
triangle that rises ever higher. This rising accent
• Improvisation 31 gives a heroic feel to the violence.
 Yellow-Red-Blue was created by
Wassily Kandinsky in 1925. The
primary colors on the painting
feature squares, circles and triangles
and there are abstract shapes mixed
in with these. There are also straight
and curved black lines that go
through the colors and shapes. This
is to help provoke deep thought in
the person viewing the piece. It can
actually be divided in half with how
different each of the sides are. The
left side has rectangles, squares and
straight lines in bright colors while
the right side features darker colors
in various abstract shapes. These
two sides show different influences
and are meant to create varied
• Yellow-Red-Blue emotions in the viewer.
 Was created in 1913, Kandinsky also
expressed the communion between artist and
viewer as being available to both the senses
and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones
and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized
that (for example), yellow is the colour of
middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the
colour of closure, and the end of things; and
that combinations of colours produce
vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played
on a piano. Kandinsky also developed a
theory of geometric figures and their
relationships - claiming, for example, that the
circle is the most peaceful shape and

• Composition VI represents the human soul. These theories are

explained in Point and Line to Plane.
During the studies Kandinsky made in
preparation for Composition IV, he became
exhausted while working on a painting and
went for a walk.
 •Was also created in 1913, In terms of size,
amount of preparatory work, complexity
of themes, subjective involvement, and,
not least, as an objective pictorial
entity Composition VII must be
considered Kandinsky's masterpiece.
Without doubt it is the acme of his artistic
achievements during the period in
Munich.

•For Composition VII alone we know of

over thirty drawings and watercolors,
some of them detailed studies that recall
those drawings of the old
• Composition VII masters Caravaggio, Leonardo da
Vinci with minute representations of folds,
foliage, or limbs of the human body.