Collecting 101

1.

Expressionismus, die Kunstwende

Conceived as a reaction against Impressionism, the Expressionists united in their quest to explore deeper, internal meaning through colour exaggeration and abstraction. Whereas Impressionism captured the external world, Expressionism rejected the ideologies of realism and looked inwards to mine self-expression, subjectivity and inner feelings.

The movement’s title is thought to have been coined by Czech art historian Antonín Matějček in 1910 as a term to illustrate the opposite intentions of Impressionism. Expressionism was later popularised by several German writers including Paul Cassirer, Wilhelm Worringer, and notably, Herwarth Walden who wrote the book Expressionismus, die Kunstwende in 1918.

It’s commonly believed that Expressionism has its roots in Germany – where it was divided into two core groups, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter – and Austria, however, movements with similar ideals, such as the Fauvists, were manifesting concurrently in France and Europe, before spreading out into the rest of the world.

Many artists affiliated with these groups often also worked independently, like Emil Nolde, or went on to develop their own movements, such as George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann and the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, which was conceived as a reaction against Expressionist values.

Though widely afforded less prominence than their male counterparts, the Expressionist movement also drew in a host of important female artists either as members of the groups or by association. This included the likes of Gabriele Münter, Marianne Von Werefkin, Käthe Kollwitz, Hannah Höch, Jeanne Mammen, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, Charlotte Salomon, Maria Uhden and Broncia Koller-Pinell.

2.

Die Brücke

The origins of Die Brücke (the Bridge) can be traced back to a single day: 7 June 1905, when four Jugendstil architecture students in Dresden (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl) joined forces to escape the prescribed, rigid constraints of academic and middle-class society, and form a ‘bridge’ to the art of the future.

Named after an excerpt from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, the group is widely seen as the headspring of German Expressionism, propelling the country’s art onto the global avant-garde stage.

Their painting approach – often compared to that of the Fauves – is characterised by heightened, clashing colours, strong, crude lines and dynamic compositions, and the use of woodcut prints. Subject matter involved emotionally charged, often-violent renditions of city streets and liberated sexuality in response to the increasingly depersonalised and alienating existence of the urban environment. 

The group was later joined by Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde and Cuno Amiet, and moved from Dresden to Berlin in 1911 where their most iconic works were created such as Kirchner’s Five Women in the Street (1913), though the group dissolved in the same year.

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3.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was conceived in Munich in 1911 as a liberal response to the traditional principles of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, a group Wassily Kandinsky had founded in 1909.

Formed by Kandinsky and Franz Marc, Der Blaue Reiter (which shares its name with a 1903 painting by Kandinsky), was joined by August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter and, later, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee.

Although Der Blaue Reiter wasn’t anchored on a core manifesto and approaches varied, members were united in their desire to express notions of pure spiritual truth.

Contrary to their Dresden counterparts, who responded to dehumanising shifts in industrial urban society, Der Blaue Reiter sought a return to spiritualism and symbolic art of the past, modernising through abstraction, connecting art with music, and allowing for a more intuitive approach to creation.

The group was short-lived, torn apart by the outbreak of the war in 1914. Macke was killed in action in 1914 and Marc killed in 1916, while Kandinsky, von Werefkin and von Jawlensky were forced to return to Russia due to their citizenship.

4.

Austrian Expressionism

Although there was never a dedicated group of Expressionists in Austria, two independent artists largely dominated the movement: Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

Both focused on the human form, often using sexually and psychologically charged bodies that would expose the human psyche and peel away the rigid mask of complacency and conformity in Viennese society.

Figurative drawing and painting were at the heart of the Austrian model of expression, in which intensely erotic, exaggerated nude portraits were positioned as antidotes to societal rigidity.

The resulting works were often uncomfortable depictions of contorted bodies in angst, in which colour, fluid lines, distortion, and turbulent brushstrokes were used as tools to convey jarring emotion.

Max Oppenheimer and Richard Gerstl were also key members of Austrian Expressionism. Oppenheimer knew both Kokoschka (who had strong links to the German Expressionists), and Schiele (with whom Oppenheimer shared a studio in 1910), and the three initially coexisted amicably, however after a poster design for his Munich exhibition drew criticism from Kokoschka, the artists parted ways.

5.

Expressionist Prints

Printmaking offered the Expressionists a fast-paced, immediate platform for communicating their ideas. Woodcutting was a particularly attractive technique for the movement, favoured for its raw qualities and well aligned with their characteristic bold, flat and simplified forms. It also proved to be a useful tool in the creation of striking posters, which often contained political agendas.

In the aftermath of WWI, the adoption of the woodcut process was seen as a return to an ancient, pure, pre-academic technique, used notably by Die Brücke.

Despite this emphasis on the revival of historical methods, other Expressionists made use of more modern printmaking techniques such as intaglio and lithography.

Rebelling against the social conservatism of the day, printmaking offered the Expressionists an instantly recognisable mode of image-making that could be popularised and easily distributed.

While some Expressionists depicted harrowing figurative representations of wartime and a society in angst, others, such as Kirchner, Kandinsky, Marc, and Münter deployed printmaking as an extension of the subconscious mind.

Unearthing the contents of their psyche through bold colour and geometric forms, they didn’t seek to anchor their work in a specific historical moment, but rather tune in to the wider human experience. It’s this emphasis on subjectivity, introspection and deeply personal responses to times of change and upheaval that gives Expressionism its longevity and contemporary resonance.

6.

On The Market

German Expressionist Art continues to have strong prominence in exhibitions and important private and museum collections around the world, particularly in the USA and UK, where large groups of people who fled Germany in the 1930s with their collections sought refuge. Since then, recognition for German and Austrian Expressionist art has continued to burgeon, evident in the consistently impressive performance of works at Bonhams auctions.

Among the notable results are Franz Marc’s Pferd (1912), which sold for an astonishing £1,095,062 inc. premium at Bonhams in 2019. Gabriele Münter’s 1908 painting, Friedhoftor (Murnau) recently sold for US$277,575 inc. premium in 2022, while Kandinsky’s Einige Spitzen (1925), sold for US$3,270,312 inc. premium in 2020.

In line with this increasing appetite, we will be holding our second themed auction celebrating the Expressionist movement and those surrounding it on 19 October 2023 in London.