Stop 22: The Expressionist Tradition

Paula Modersohn-Becker was an important early Expressionist. She was a member of the Worpswede Colony, a group of artists that had retreated to the northern German countryside to paint landscapes.

The Städel Museum had amassed an incredible collection of Modern Art. However, under Nazi rule, the Städel’s collection was declared ‘degenerate’ and decimated.

The Bridge formed in Dresden in 1905. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a driving force of the group, which renounced earlier traditions of art.

Throughout last century, different groups of artists across Europe were experimenting with bold ideas and forms. Max Ernst was a Dadaist and Surrealist, and Paul Klee part of the Bauhaus movement.

The proto-Modernist movement, the Blaue Reiter group was interested in Cubism and Abstraction. It included Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, Franz Marc, Alexej Jawlensky and Paul Klee.

Beckmann’s outlook and style were profoundly affected by his experience of World War I. His paintings are tense and angular, conveying his sense of disquiet and anxiety.

Declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis, Max Beckmann was banned from exhibiting. His later works are full of the dread that settled around Europe during the war years.

Max Beckmann was a hugely influential German painter. A young prodigy, he dismissed Expressionism and abstraction and insisted that art be an unsentimental look at contemporary life.

The works of James Ensor, with their strange imaginings and macabre visions, resist categorisation. Ensor and Fernand Khnopff were founding members of the Belgian avant-garde group Les XX – or The Twenty.

Les Nabis experimented with bold colouring and abstraction, taking inspiration from Paul Gauguin. They included Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Aristide Maillol and Edouard Vuillard.