Expressionism

EXPRESSIONISM
20th Century Art Movement

Expressionism
• Expressionism is
a modernist movement, initially
in poetry and painting,
originating in Germany at the
beginning of the 20th century.
• Its typical trait is to present
the world solely from a
subjective perspective, distorting
it radically for emotional effect
in order to evoke moods or
ideas.
• Expressionism shouldn't
confused with Expressivism.

EXPRESSIONISM
• Expressionist artists have sought to
express the meaning of emotional
experience rather than physical
reality.
• Expressionism developed as an avant-
garde style before the First World War. It
remained popular during the Weimar
Republic, particularly in Berlin.
• The style extended to a wide range
of the arts, including expressionist
architecture, painting, literature,
theatre, dance, film and music.

EXPRESSIONISIM
• The term is sometimes suggestive of angst.
• In a historical sense, much older painters
such as ‘’ Matthias Grünewald ‘’ and ‘’ El
Greco ’’ are sometimes termed expressionist,
though the term is applied mainly to 20th-
century works.
• The Expressionist emphasis on individual
and subjective perspective has been
characterized as a reaction to positivism and
other artistic styles such as Naturalism and
Impressionism.

EXPRESSIONIST
PICTURE
• It aims to convey the emotional world of
the artist with distorted lines, shapes and
extravagant colors. It includes a perspective
with anti-naturalistic subjectivity opposed to
19th century realism and idealism.
• When interpreting an expressionist
artwork, attention should be paid to the use
of lines and colors. Pointed sharp lines, reds
and shades accentuate anger, while circular
formations, blue and shades emphasize more
calmness.

EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE
• Expressive architecture, which showed its effect
especially in Germany between 1910 and 1930,
has parallels with the Bauhaus school in this sense.
• It also determines its unique dynamics. While
eliminating the 90 degree angle is considered as
the basic technique, the purpose of integrating the
functionality with the form creates the peculiar
dynamics of the expressive understanding of
architecture with the use of unusual forms and
new materials. The understanding of individual and
therefore emotional design is the philosophy of
expressionist architecture.

EXPRESSIONISM IN
ARCHITECTURE
• Expressionist art disappeared five
years after the Nazi administration
took over in Germany in 1933. After
the Second World War, it re-effected
with a brutal understanding. The
stress-laden affections that most
expressionist artists took part in the
lost war were also a factor that gave
rise to expressiveness.
• The Sydney Opera House, built in the
1960s, is among the most important
works of postmodern expressiveness.
Expressionism continues to be alive
as a basic artistic expression, also
identifying with cubist, minimalist or
futuristic insights.

EXPRESSIONISM IN
ARCHITECTURE
• In architecture, two specific buildings are
identified as Expressionist: Bruno Taut's Glass
Pavilion of the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition
(1914), and Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower
in Potsdam, Germany completed in 1921.
• The interior of Hans Poelzig's Berlin theatre
(the Grosse Schauspielhaus), designed for the
director Max Reinhardt, is also cited sometimes.
The influential architectural critic and historian
Sigfried Giedion, in his book Space, Time and
Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist
architecture as a part of the development of
functionalism.

BRICK
EXPRESSIONISM
• The term Brick Expressionism
describes a specific variant of
expressionism that uses bricks,
tiles or clinker bricks as the main
visible building material.
Buildings in the style were
erected mostly in the 1920s. The
style's regional centres were the
larger cities of Northern
Germany and the Ruhr area, but
the Amsterdam School belongs
to the same category.

RUHR AREA
• The Ruhr region is Germany's largest
metropolitan settlement, located in North
Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of 5.3
million and an area of 4.435 km². Duisburg,
Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen,
Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Oberhausen,
Bottrop and Dortmund are the major
central cities of this region. The Ruhr area is
also known as Pott or Kohlenpott. Until
recently, the main source of income was
coal and steel production, and today it is
Germany's Information Technology (IT),
logistics and alternative energy center.

BRICK EXPRESSIONISM
• Amsterdam's 1912 cooperative-
commercial Scheepvaarthuis (Ship
ping House) is considered the
starting point and prototype for
Amsterdam School work: brick
construction with complicated
masonry, traditional massing, and
the integration of an elaborate
scheme of building elements
(decorative masonry, art glass,
wrought-iron work, and exterior
figurative sculpture) that embodies
and expresses the identity of the
building. The School flourished
until about 1925.

ABSTRACTION IN
EXPRESSIONISM
• The tendency towards abstraction in art
corresponded with abstraction in
architecture. Publication of Concerning the
Spiritual in Art in 1912 by Wassily
Kandinsky, his first advocacy of abstraction
while still involved in Der Blaue Reiter
phaze, marks a beginning of abstraction in
expressionism and abstraction in
expressionist architecture.

ABSTARCITON IN
EXPRESSIONISM
• The conception of the Einstein Tower by
Erich Mendelson was not far behind
Kandinsky, in advancing abstraction in
architecture. By the publication of
Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane in 1926
a rigorous and more geometric form of
abstraction emerged, and Kandinsky's
work took on clearer and drafted lines.
• The trends in architecture are not
dissimilar, as the Bauhaus was gaining
attention and Expressionist architecture
was giving way to the geometric
abstractions of modern architecture.

Monument to the
March Dead
Walter Gropius
• It is an expressionist
monument reminiscent of
workers killed in Kapp Putsch at
the Weimar Central Cemetery in
Weimar, Germany.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Nollendorfplat

Cawen Alvar
Sokea Soittoniekka

Wassily Kandinsky, The Blue Rider

REFERENCES
• Fostinum: German Expressionist Architecture
• Wendingen, digital Magazines IADDB (date of editing, not date in magazine)
• Breitschmid, Markus (2017). "Alpine Architecture – Bruno Taut", in: Disegno – Quarterly Journal for Design, No. 14,
London (Spring 2017),pp. 62–70.
• Rauhut, Christoph and Lehmann, Niels (2015). Fragments of Metropolis Berlin, Hirmer Publishers 2015, ISBN 978-
3777422909
• Stissi, Vladimir (2007). Amsterdam, het mekka van de volkshuisvesting, 1909-1942 (Amsterdam, the Mecca of Social
Housing, 1909-1942), Dutch language, more than 500 ill., NAi Rotterdam.
• Frampton, Kenneth (2004). Modern architecture - a critical history, Third edition, World of Art, ISBN 0-500-20257-5
• Benson, Timothy. O. (); et al. (2001-09-17). Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy (Weimar
and Now: German Cultural Criticism). University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23003-5.
• Bullock, Alan; Stallybrass, Oliver; Trombley, Stephen, eds. (1988). The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (Paperback).
Fontana press. p. 918 pages. ISBN 0-00-686129-6.
• Jencks, Charles (1986). Modern Movements in Architecture, Second edition, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-009963-8
• Whyte, Iain Boyd ed. (1985). Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, The MIT
Press, ISBN 0-262-23121-2
• Bletter, Rosemarie Haag (Summer 1983). "Expressionism and the New Objectivity", in: Art Journal, 43:2 (Summer 1983),
pp. 108–120.
• Bletter, Rosemarie Haag (March 1981). "The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the
History of the Crystal Metaphor, in: JSAH (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians), vol. 40, no. 1 (March 1981): 20–
43.
• Pehnt, Wolfgang (1973). Expressionist Architecture, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-34058-7
• Banham, Reyner (1972). Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Third edition, Praeger Publishers Inc., ISBN 0-85139-
632-1
• Sharp, Dennis (1966). Modern Architecture and Expressionism, George Braziller New York, OCLC 180572

Expressionism

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