EXPRESSIONISM

Expressionism is an art movement in which painters try to express an emotion. That is why it’s called expressionism. Often an expressionist painting is exaggerated and contains bright colours, although a lot of artist had their own style. Below you can see two paintings, both are entirely different and still can be called a expressionist painting. Can you see which emotions are being expressed?

Melancholie, Edvard Munch (1893)

Woman in White shirt, Lucian Freud (1956-1957)

As you can see two entirely different styles of painting were used, but both these paintings are expressionist paintings. As you can clearly see which emotions are being expressed. 

Although, we just defined what expressionism is. It still difficult to exactly define what expressionism as some other "isms" from the same time period (namely the modernist peroid) overlap with expressionism. Though one of the things that can be said with certainty is that expressionism isn't a style which potrays the world around us accurately. 

Now a little history, expressionism began in the early 1900s but even before that there were paintings which could be called expressionistic. In the 20th century it was only given an name and became quite popular. Still the term expressionist mostly applies to 20th century painters. Some examples of expressionist painters are;

• James Ensor - A Dutch painter who had great influence on the Expressionist movement in Germany.
• Oskar Kokoschka - An Austrian artist whose artwork was displayed in the German magazine The Storm when Expressionism became a true art movement.
• August Macke - A leading member of the Expressionist group The Blue Rider in Germany, he also painted some Abstract Art.
• Franz Marc - A founding member of The Blue Rider group, Franz Marc was one of the leaders in the Expressionist movement.
• Edvard Munch - A Symbolist and Expressionist, Munch is best known for his famous painting The Scream.
• Egon Schiele - An early adopter of Expressionism, Egon died at the young age of 28

The Crab, Oskar Kokoschka (1939-1940)