EN*AMOR*ARTE
"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination..." ES MENTIRA, NO EXISTEN GUERRAS POLÍTICAS, RELIGIOSAS, ECONÓMICAS...TODAS SON LA MISMA GUERRA: LA GUERRA CONTRA LA IMAGINACIÓN.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world's most famous graphic artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be seen on the many web sites on the internet.

He is most famous for his so-called impossible structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles.

But he also made some wonderful, more realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy.

Castrovalva for example, where one already can see Escher's fascination for high and low, close by and far away. The lithograph Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi Coast was made in 1931, but comes back for example, in his masterpiece Metamorphosis I and II

M.C. Escher, during his lifetime, made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. Like some of his famous predecessors, - Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein-, M.C. Escher was left-handed.

Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, as the fourth and youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. After failing his high school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem

After only one week, he informed his father that he would rather study graphic art instead of architecture, as he had shown his drawings and linoleum cuts to his graphic teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, who encouraged him to continue with graphic arts.

After finishing school, he traveled extensively through Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They settled in Rome, where they stayed until 1935. During these 11 years, Escher would travel each year throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.

Many of these sketches he would later use for various other lithographs and/or woodcuts and wood engravings, for example the background in the lithograph Waterfall stems from his Italian period, or the trees reflecting in the woodcut Puddle, which are the same trees Escher used in his woodcut "Pineta of Calvi", which he made in 1932.

M.C. Escher became fascinated by the regular Division of the Plane, when he first visited the Alhambra, a fourteen century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain in 1922.

During the years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he vigorously pursued his hobby, by drawing 62 of the total of 137 Regular Division Drawings he would make in his lifetime.

He would extend his passion for the Regular Division of the Plane, by using some of his drawings as the basis for yet another hobby, carving beech wood spheres.

He played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. His art continues to amaze and wonder millions of people all over the world. In his work we recognize his keen observation of the world around us and the expressions of his own fantasies. M.C. Escher shows us that reality is wondrous, comprehensible and fascinating.

COLORPLATE VII

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972). más conocido por sus iniciales como M.C. Escher, es uno de los más grandes artistas gráficos del siglo XX. Tal vez la mejor definición que se ha dado de él sea la de «uno de los más reconocibles y admirados por el gran público». Esto viene a decir que muchas personas admiran y encuentran curiosos, intrigantes y bonitos sus trabajos, aunque al principio no sepan muy bien de quién son ni conozcan realmente al autor o la época en que fueron creados.

COLORPLATE IV

Sus más populares obras, figuras imposibles, fondos reticulados con diversos patrones y mundos imaginarios han sido reproducidas hasta la saciedad en portadas de libros, revistas, campañas publicitarias y en todo tipo de formatos. Escher es, en cierto modo, uno de los artistas más referenciados en la «cultura popular» del siglo XX.

Dado que sus obras guardan ciertas similitudes entre sí debido a la recurrencia de los temas tratados (las figuras imposibles, las metamorfosis) son fácilmente «reconocibles» para el observador interesado, que a veces acaba descubriendo al artista tras haberse encontrado previamente con gran parte de su obra.

COLORPLATE VIII

Tal vez el carácter matemático de sus obras ha hecho también que sea uno de los artistas más populares en los entornos científicos, especialmente matemáticos e informáticos. Curiosamente, sus conocimientos matemáticos siempre fueron muy limitados. Muchas de las conclusiones gráficas y matemáticas a las que llegó, que le permitirían realizar algunos de sus trabajos, tuvo que descubrirlas por sí mismo.

CASTLE IN THE AIR

Mini-biografía de M.C. Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher nació el 17 de junio de 1898 en Leenwarden (Países Bajos), hijo de un ingeniero hidráulico. Era un pésimo estudiante que tuvo que repetir curso dos veces. Para él la escuela era una pesadilla, excepto las clases de dibujo. Como tantos otros grandes artistas, era zurdo. Su profesor F.W. van der Haagen le enseñó la técnica de los grabados en linóleo y fue una gran influencia para el joven Escher.

THE DROWNED CATHEDRAL

En 1919 comenzó a estudiar en la Escuela de Arquitectura, pero abandonó sus estudios. A cambio, comenzó a aprender la técnica del grabado en madera o xilografía de Samuel Jesserun de Mesquita, su maestro, que utilizaría posteriormente en muchas de sus obras.

BONIFACIO

Hacia 1922 fue a Italia de vacaciones y teminaría viviendo en Roma una larga temporada. Le gustaban el clima y los paisajes italianos, y a menudo los recorría a pie en larguísimas excursiones. En 1924 conoció en uno de esos viajes a Jetta Umiker, que se convertiría en su mujer y con quien tendría tres hijos. Muchas de las obras de Escher en las que se ven casas y edificios en la costa están inspiaradas en la arquitectura tradicional de pequeños pueblecitos italianos.

OPPOSITE ABOVE

Escher también viajó a España, donde descubriría la Alhambra de Granada, el Generalife y la Mezquita de Córdoba, cuyas maravillas estudiaría con detalle. Lo que aprendió allí tendría fuertes influencias en muchos de sus trabajos, especialmente en los relacionados con la partición regular del plano y el uso de patrones que rellenan el espacio sin dejar ningún hueco.

TOWN IN SOUTHERN ITALY

A partir de 1935, Escher dejó italia entre otras cosas debido al desagradable clima político que se avecinaba y que desembocaría en la II Guerra Mundial, y pasó algunos años en Suiza, cuyo clima le resultó muy desagradable y poco inspirador. Luego fue a vivir a Bélgica en 1937 y finalmente regresó a Baarn, Holanda, en 1941.

STILL LIFE WITH MIRRORS
 ST

Hasta 1951 vivió básicamente dependiendo económicamente de sus padres. A partir de entonces fue cuando comenzó a vender sus grabados y obtener un buen dinero por ellos. Esto le permitió vivir sus últimos años con una economía personal excelente. Generalmente hacía copias de las litografías y grabados por encargo. También hizo por encargo diseños de sellos, portadas de libros, y algunas esculturas en marfil y madera. En cierto modo le resulta gratificante y a la vez fácil, y se admiraba de tener en su taller una especie de «máquina de fabricar billetes» reproduciendo sus propias obras. Normalmente no usaba elementos de obras anteriores en las nuevas nuevas, excepto en los encargos especiales. Hacía, por ejemplo, esculturas en madera basadas en algunos de sus dibujos, y para algunas peticiones especiales reciclaba parte de las ideas y elementos de obras anteriores.

TOWER OF BABEL

Hasta 1962 su producción de trabajos fue muy constante. Entonces cayó enfermo y eso supuso un pequeño parón transitorio. En 1969 realizó su último trabajo original, Serpientes, que demostraba que su habilidad seguía intacta. Hacia 1970 ingresó en una residencia para artistas en Holanda, donde pudo mantener su propio taller.

METAMORPHOSIS II

Falleció el 27 de marzo de 1972.

A lo largo de su carrera realizó más de 400 litografías y grabados en madera, y también unos 2.000 dibujos y borradores. De muchos existen decenas de reproducciones, cientos e incluso miles de otros. Al final de su carrera destruyó algunas de las planchas para que no se realizaran más reproducciones de originales. También existen estudios y borradores de muchas de sus obras, en ocasiones también varias versiones de algunas de ellas. Muchas de su obras se vendieron masivamente poco después de su muerte y están esparcidas por el mundo. Un grupo importante está expuesto de forma permanente en el Museo Escher en La Haya, Holanda.

SKY AND WATER

El trabajo artístico de Escher

Como artista, M.C. Escher resulta difícil de clasificar. Se han hecho múltiples interpretaciones de sus obras, pero la realidad es que Escher no tenía grandes prentensiones ni mensajes que transmitir, sino que básicamente plasmaba lo que le gustaba. No basa su trabajo en los sentimientos, como otros artistas, sino simplemente en situaciones, soluciones a problemas, juegos visuales y guiños al espectador. Visiones, en ocasiones, que le sobrevenían por las noches, que pasaban por su imaginación y que creía merecedoras de ser plasmadas en sus cuadros.

STILL LIFE AND STREET

Él mismo reconocería que no le interesaba mucho la realidad, ni la humanidad en general, las personas o la psicología, sino sólo las cosas que pasaban por su cabeza. En ciertro modo era alguien introvertido, dicen incluso que de trato difícil, que prefería crear su propio universo.

Los expertos coinciden, y es bastante evidente examinando la mayor parte de sus obras, en que una de sus principales características es la dualidad y la búsqueda del equilibrio, la utilización del blanco y el negro, la simetría, el infinito frente a lo limitado, el que todo objeto representado tenga su contrapartida.

HAND WITH REFLECTING SPHERE

El análisis de sus obras, tal y como definió Bruno Ernst, uno de sus biógrafo, permite clasificarlas básicamente en tres temas y diversas categorías:

• La estructura del espacio – incluyendo paisajes, compenetración de mundo y cuerpos matemáticos.
• La estructura de la superficie – Metamorfosis, ciclos y aproximaciones al infinito.
• La proyección del espacio tridimensional en el plano – Representación pictórica tradicional, perspectiva y figuras imposibles.

OTHER WORLD

Las obras más conocidas de Escher son probablemente las figuras imposibles, seguidas de los ciclos, metamorfosis y, directa o indirectamente, sus diversos trabajos sobre la estructura de la superficie y la partición regular del plano (patrones que rellenan el plano).

Ç

TETHRAEDRAL PLANETOID

Para descubrir más sobre M.C. Escher

REPTILES

• M.C. Escher, the official website, la web oficial.
• M.C. Escher en la Wikipedia en español.
• M.C. Escher en la Wikipedia en inglés.
• Colección de obras de Escher, de las más veteranas y completas.
• Cuadros de M.C. Escher, otra colección, en castellano.
• M.C. Escher, otra pequeña biografía de Sospechosos Habituales.

Actualización (junio 2006): Esta anotación con la mini-biografía de M.C. Escher queda licenciada bajo GFDL, a petición de un lector que la consideró interesante como para añadirla a lo que ya hay en la Wikipedia en español sobre M.C. Escher.

SELF PORTRAIT

DRAWING HANDS

HOUSE OF STAIRS I

WATERFALL

The Scream

An agonized figure wails against a blood red Oslofjord skyline in Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893), National Gallery, Oslo.The Scream (Skrik, 1893) is a seminal expressionist painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Regarded by many as his most important work, it is said by some to symbolize modern man taken by an attack of existential angst. The landscape in the background is Oslofjord, viewed from the hill of Ekeberg. The Norwegian word skrik is usually translated as "scream", but is cognate with the English shriek. Occasionally, the painting has been called The Cry.

Munch executed four versions of the painting, of which the most famous are a tempera on cardboard version (measuring 83.5 x 66 cm) formerly in the Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway (shown below), and an oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard (measuring 91 x 73.5 cm) in the National Gallery (shown to right), also in Oslo. A third version is also owned by the Munch Museum, and a fourth is owned by Petter Olsen. Munch later also translated the picture into a lithograph (shown below), so the image could be reproduced in reviews all over the world. However, one version is currently missing from the Munch Museum, having been stolen by art thieves in August 2004.

Sources of inspiration
Munch wrote, concerning the image:

"I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

This has led some commentators to propose that the person in the painting is not screaming, but reacting with despair to the scream passing through nature.

The scene is from a road overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedøya, from the hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Cathrine was interned in the mental hospital at the foot of Ekeberg.

In 2003, astronomers claimed to have identified the time that the painting depicted. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 caused unusually intense sunsets throughout Europe in the winter of 1883-4, which Munch captured in his picture.

In 1978, the renowned Munch scholar Robert Rosenblum suggested that the strange, sexless creature in the foreground of the painting was probably inspired by a Peruvian mummy which Munch could have seen at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mummy, which was crouching in fetal position with its hands alongside its face, also struck the imagination of Munch's friend Paul Gauguin: it stood model for the central figure in his painting Human misery (Grape harvest at Arles) and for the old woman at the left in his painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?. More recently, an Italian anthropologist speculated that Munch might have seen a mummy in Florence's Museum of Natural History which bears an even more striking resemblance to the painting.

Thefts

On August 22, 2004 this version, executed in tempera on cardboard, was stolen from the Munch Museum, Oslo, at gunpoint.

Thieves taking paintings from the Munch Museum, August 2004On 12 February 1994 the National Gallery's Scream was stolen. Initially the theft was linked to various anti-abortion groups active in Norway, but this turned out to be false. After three months, the painting was offered back to the Norwegian government for a ransom of USD $1 million. The ransom was refused, but the painting was nevertheless recovered on 7 May, following a sting operation organised by the Norwegian police with assistance from the British Police and the Getty Museum.

On August 22, 2004, the Munch Museum's Scream was stolen at gunpoint, along with Munch's Madonna. Museum officials expressed hope that they would see the painting again, theorizing that perhaps the thieves would seek ransom money. The paintings are still missing. On April 8, 2005, Norwegian police arrested a suspect in connection with the theft[3]. On April 28, 2005, it was rumoured that the two paintings had been burnt by the thieves to conceal evidence[4]. On June 1, 2005, the City Government of Oslo offered a reward of 2 million Norwegian kroner (about USD $320,000) for information that could help locate the paintings. Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" was apparently undamaged in a 2004 robbery. "The other ("The Scream") looked in okay condition." (Thomas Nataas)

Role in popular culture

Robert Fishbone's inflatable ScreamIn the late 20th century, The Scream acquired iconic status in popular culture. In 1983-1984, pop artist Andy Warhol made a series of silk prints of works by Munch, including The Scream. The idea was to desacralize the painting by devaluating its originality and making it into a mass-reproducible object. However, as remarked above, Munch had already begun that process himself, by making a lithograph of the work for reproduction.

Characteristic of post-modern art is Erró's ironic and irreverent treatment of Munch's masterpiece in his acrylic paintings The Second Scream (1967) and Ding Dong (1979).

Munch translated The Scream into lithograph in 1895 so that it could be reproduced all over the world.The work's reproduction on all kinds of items, from tee shirts to coffee mugs, bears witness to its iconic status as well as to its complete desacralization in the eyes of today's public. In that respect, it is comparable to other iconic works of art, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The Scream is an emotionally very potent work, and the banalization of the image in popular culture can be interpreted as an attempt to defuse the feeling of unease it inevitabily provokes in the viewer, though some would say that this interpretation is overcomplication, and that the makers of merchandise are simply trying to make money off a well known image.

An American muralist, Robert Fishbone, discovered a gap in the market when in 1991 he started selling inflatable dolls of the central figure in the painting. His St. Louis-based company, On The Wall Productions, has sold hundreds of thousands of them. Critics have observed that by taking the figure out of its context (the landscape), Fishbone has destroyed the unity of Munch's work, thereby neutralizing its expressive force.

As one of very few works of modern art that are instantly recognizable even to people who know very little about art, The Scream has been used in advertising, in cartoons and on television. In one of her talk shows, Dame Edna Everage appeared in a Scream-patterned dress. The work has also fascinated film makers. Ghostface, the psychotic murderer in Wes Craven's Scream horror movies, wears a Halloween mask inspired by the central figure in the painting. Child actor Macaulay Culkin's pose in front of the mirror, in Home Alone by Chris Columbus, also refers ironically to Munch'

Name:
1893   Oil, 37 7/8" x 30 5/8"   National Gallery, O

Pocos artistas como Munch ofrecen una relación tan estrecha entre vida y obra: los avatares personales ejercerán una influencia decisiva en la orientación de su actividad artística. Edvard Munch nace en Loten (Noruega) en 1863, hijo de un médico castrense. Cuando aún no ha cumplido los cinco años, su madre muere víctima de la tuberculosis. Se inicia de esta forma tan temprana una relación con la muerte que habría de obsesionar al pintor durante toda su vida, pues nueve años más tarde fallecería, a causa de esta misma enfermedad, su hermana Sophie, apenas dos años mayor que él. En un entorno que el artista definió como un lugar "opresivo y triste" transcurre su infancia

>París y el impresionismo

Tras permanecer un año en la Escuela Técnica de Cristianía (la capital de Noruega, que a partir de 1924 se llamará Oslo), donde había iniciado estudios de ingeniería, en 1880 toma la firme decisión de dedicarse a la pintura, y con ese propósito se inscribe en la Escuela de Dibujo de la ciudad. Los primeros años de actividad están marcados por su relación con los ambientes más radicales de Cristianía, y, en particular, con el escritor de ideas anarquistas Hans Jaeger. En su posterior evolución artística va a ser de suma importancia la visita que realiza en 1885 a París, donde tiene la ocasión de asistir ala gran exposición impresionista que ese año se celebra en la galería Durand Ruel y que exhibe, entre otras, obras de Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro y Seurat. La segunda mitad de la década de los ochenta supone la aparición de algunas de las preocupaciones que luego se harán obsesión durante toda su vida y que se reflejan en obras tan importantes como las primeras versionés de Pubertad o Al día siguiente. La obra más importante de este periodo es La niña enferma, en la que evoca su experiencia personal con la muerte de su hermana, y donde ya aparece la desolada visión de la existencia que habría de marcar la mayor parte de su producción"

En torno al cambio de siglo, el pintor abandona los trazos sinuosos que envuelven amplias superficies de colores planos, para adoptar un modo mucho más expresionista de pinceladas anchas y muy largas, que subrayan un uso cada vez más arbitrario del color. Un cambio que se aprecia claramente en su serie de pinturas de la Habitación Verde, o en las sucesivas variaciones del tema de la asesina, y que habría de hacerse patente tras la crisis de 1908. En efecto, en otoño de ese año, los problemas nerviosos del artista, agravados por los efectos del alcoholismo, le obligan a permanecer internado ocho meses en una clínica psiquiátrica de Copenhague. Restablecido, regresa a Noruega e inicia un periodo en el que su obra muestra una nueva vitalidad. Un excelente ejemplo de ello son los paneles que decoran el Aula Magna de la Universidad de Oslo. Este optimismo es paralelo al reconocimiento general de su obra, que se concreta en la exposición del Sonderbund de Colonia en 1912 -donde se le equipara en importancia con Cézanne, Gauguin y Van Gogh- y la del año siguiente de Berlín. Munch pasará las últimas dos décadas de su vida retirado en su finca de Ekely, en las afueras de Oslo, entregado con renovada intensidad a la pintura. En enero de 1944, en una Noruega ocupada por las tropas alemanas, Edvard Munch muere como había vivido: completamente solo

I am dancing with my true love - a memory of her. A smiling, blond-haired woman enters who wishes to take the flower of love - but it won't allow itself to be taken. And on the other side one can see her dressed in black troubled by the couple dancing - rejected - as I was rejected from her [Mrs. Heiberg's] dance (Müller-Westermann 78).

Munch Gallery

EL AMOR EN LOS CUADROS DE MUNCH

The kiss. El beso

The dance of life- la danza de la vida

 Ashes

 

Red and White... Rojo y Blanco

 

Ojo en Ojo - Eye in eye

Women in three stages. Estados de la mujer

Vampire

Separation

 

JEALOUSY- CELOS

 

ATRACTION

MELANCHOLY

HEAD TO HEAD

AMOR AND PSYCHE

CUPIDO

COMFORT

Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form. Expressionism is exhibited in many art forms, including painting, literature, theatre, film, architecture and music. The term often implies emotional angst. In a general sense, painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco can be called expressionist, though in practice, the term is applied mainly to 20th century works.

Origin of the term

Although it is used as term of reference, there has never been a distinct movement that called itself "expressionism", apart from the use of the term by Herwald Walden in his polemic magazine Der Sturm in 1912. The term is usually linked to paintings and graphic work in Germany at the turn of the century which challenged the academic traditions, particularly through the Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter groups. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche played a key role in originating modern expressionism by clarifying and serving as a conduit for previously neglected currents in ancient art.

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche presented his theory of the ancient dualism between two types of aesthetic experience, namely the Apollonian and the Dionysian; a dualism between the plastic "art of sculpture", of lyrical dream-inspiration, identity (the principium individuationis), order, regularity, and calm repose, and, on the other hand, the non-plastic "art of music", of intoxication, forgetfulness, chaos, and the ecstatic dissolution of identity in the collective. The analogy with the world of the Greek gods typifies the relationship between these extremes: two godsons, incompatible and yet inseparable. According to Nietzsche, both elements are present in any work of art. The basic characteristics of expressionism are Dionysian: bold colors, distorted forms-in-dissolution, two-dimensional, without perspective.^[1]

More generally the term refers to art that expresses intense emotion. It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there is a long line of art production in which heavy emphasis is placed on communication through emotion. Such art often occurs during time of social upheaval, and through the tradition of graphic art there is a powerful and moving record of chaos in Europe from the 15th century on the Protestant Reformation, Peasants' War, Spanish Occupation of Netherlands, the rape, pillage and disaster associated with countless periods of chaos and oppression are presented in the documents of the printmaker. Often the work is unimpressive aesthetically, but almost without exception has the capacity to move the viewer to strong emotions with the drama and often horror of the scenes depicted.

The term was also coined by Czech art historian Antonín Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of impressionism: "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself....[An Expressionist rejects] immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures....Impressions and mental images that pass through mental peoples soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condense into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols." (Gordon, 1987)

Visual artists

Some of the movement's leading visual artists in the early 20th century were:

• Germany: Heinrich Campendonk, Emil Nolde, Rolf Nesch, Franz Marc, Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Erich Heckel, Otto Dix, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Max Beckmann, Conrad Felixmüller, Carl Hofer, August Macke, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, Ludwig Meidner, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter, Max Pechstein and Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz.
• Austria: Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka
• Russia: Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alexei Jawlensky and Natalia Goncharova.
• Netherlands: Charles Eyck, Willem Hofhuizen, Jaap Min, Jan Sluyters,Vincent Van Gogh, Jan Wiegers and Hendrik Werkman
• Belgium: Constant Permeke, Gustave De Smet, Frits Van den Berghe, James Ensor, Floris Jespers and Albert Droesbeke.
• France: Georges Rouault, Gen Paul and Chaim Soutine
• Norway: Edvard Munch, Kai Fjell
• Switzerland: Carl Eugen Keel, Cuno Amiet
• Hungary: Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry
• Portugal: Mário Eloy
• Poland: Henryk Gotlib
• Ireland: Sean O'Casey, Oscar Wilde
• USA visual artists c. 1920 - : Ivan Albright, Milton Avery, Thomas Hart Benton, George Biddle, Hyman Bloom, Peter Blume, Peyton Boswell, Charles Burchfield, Paul Cadmus, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney, Edwin Dickinson, Arthur G. Dove, Norris Embry, Philip Evergood, Hugo Gellert, John D. Graham, William Gropper, George Grosz, Louis O. Guglielmi, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Charles Hawthorne, Albert Kotin, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Rico Lebrun, Jack Levine, Alfred Henry Maurer, Alice Neel, David Park, Clayton S. Price, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Ben Shahn, Harry Shoulberg, Raphael Soyer, Joseph Stella, Harry Sternberg, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Dorothea Tanning, Max Weber, Hale Woodruff, Karl Zerbe

Expressionist groups in painting

There was never a group of artists that called themselves "The expressionists". This movement primarily originated in Germany and Austria, though following World War II it began to influence young American artists. Norris Embry (1921-1981) studied with Oskar Kokoschka in 1947 and over the next 43 years produced a large body of work grounded in the Expressionist tradition. Norris Embry has been called "the first American German Expressionist". Other American artists of the late 20th and early 21st century have developed distinct movements that are generally considered part of Expressionism. Another prominent artist who came from the German Expressionist "school" was Bremen born Wolfgang Degenhardt. After working as a commercial artist in Bremen he migrated to Australia in 1954 and became quite prominent and sought after in the Hunter Valley region. His paintings captured the spirit of Australian and world issues but presented them in a way which was true to his German Expressionist roots. There were a number of Expressionist groups in painting, including the Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. The Der Blaue Reiter group was based in Munich and Die Brücke was based originally in Dresden (although some later moved to Berlin). Die Brücke was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter which was only truly together for a year (1912). The Expressionists had many influences, among them Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and African art. They also came to know the work being done by the Fauves in Paris. American Expressionism and particularly the Boston figurative expressionism were an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War.

Major figurative Boston expressionists included: Karl Zerbe, Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, David Aronson, Philip Guston. The Boston figurative expressionists post World War II were increasingly marginalized by the development of abstract expressionism centered in New York City.

Later in the 20th century, post World War II, figurative expressionism influenced worldwide a large number of artists and movements:

• New York Figurative Expressionism of the fifties represented American figurative artists such as: Robert Beauchamp, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Robert Goodnough, Grace Hartigan, Lester Johnson, Alex Katz, George McNeil, Jan Muller, Jackson Pollock, Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers and Bob Thompson.
• Lyrical Abstraction, Tachisme^[6] of the 1940s and 1950s in Europe represented by artists such as Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung, Nicolas de Staël and others.
• Abstract Expressionism, of the 1950s represented primarily of American artist such as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning and others. some of whom took part in figurative expressionism.

In the United States and Canada Lyrical Abstraction beginning in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

Neo-expressionism was an international revival movement beginning in the late 1970s and centered around artists across the world:

• Germany: Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz and others;
• USA: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eric Fischl, David Salle and Julian Schnabel;
• France: Rémi Blanchard, Hervé Di Rosa and others;
• Italy: Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia and Enzo Cucchi;
• England: David Hockney, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff

Many other artists from different countries joined the movement of Neo-expressionism.

Influenced by the Fauves, Expressionism worked with arbitrary colors as well as jarring compositions. In reaction and opposition to French Impressionism which focused on rendering the sheer visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to capture emotions and subjective interpretations: It was not important to reproduce an aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter; the Expressonists focused on capturing vivid emotional reactions through powerful colors and dynamic compositions instead. The leader of Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky, would take this a step further. He believed that with simple colors and shapes the spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the paintings, therefore he made the move to abstraction.

Sculpture

Some sculptors also adopted this style, as for example Ernst Barlach.

Film

There was also an expressionist movement in film, often referred to as German Expressionism. The most important examples are Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Golem: How He Came Into the World (1920), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922).

Literature

In literature the novels of Franz Kafka are often described as expressionist. Expressionist poetry also flourished mainly in the German-speaking countries. The most influential expressionist poets were Georg Trakl, Georg Heym, Ernst Stadler, Gottfried Benn and August Stramm.

Theatre

In the theatre, there was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th century German theatre of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge, Walter Hasenclever, Hans Henny Jahnn, and Arnolt Bronnen. They looked back to Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind as precursors of their dramaturgical experiments.

Oskar Kokoschka's 1909 playlet, Murderer, The Hope of Women is often called the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The Man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays.

Expressionist plays often dramatize the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists, and are referred to as Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on the episodic presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross. August Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus.

The plays often dramatize the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, often personified in the figure of the Father. In Sorge's The Beggar, (Der Bettler), the young hero's mentally ill father raves about the prospect of mining the riches of Mars; he is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's Parricide (Vatermord), the son stabs his tyranncial father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother.

In expressionist drama, the speech is heightened, whether expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often unfolding on the stark, steeply raked flights of stairs that quickly became his trademark. In the 1920s, expressionism enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the American theatre, including plays by Eugene O'Neill (The Hairy Ape, The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown), Sophie Treadwell (Machinal) and Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine).

Music In music, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, the members of the Second Viennese School, wrote pieces described as expressionist (Schoenberg also made expressionist paintings). Other composers who followed them, such as Ernst Krenek, are often considered as a part of the expressionist movement in music. What distinguished these composers from their contemporaries such as Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin and Igor Stravinsky is that expressionist composers self-consciously used atonality to free their artform from the traditional tonality. They also sought to express the subconscious, the 'inner necessity' and suffering through their highly dissonant musical language. Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand, by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck, an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner), are example of expressionist works.

 Expressionist architecture

In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as expressionist: Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914), and Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany completed in 1921. Hans Poelzig's Berlin theatre (Grosse Schauspielhaus) interior for Max Reinhardt is also sometimes cited. The influential architectural critic and historian, Sigfried Giedion in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941) dismissed Expressionist architecture as a side show in the development of functionalism. It was only in the 1970s that expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated in a more positive light.