Expressionism is a modernist movement that emerged in early 20th-century Germany. Artists working in this style distort the reality of their subjects in order to “express” their own emotions, feelings, and ideas. With an aesthetic and approach heavily inspired by the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch—two artists viewed as predominant precursors of the movement—Expressionists employed artificial color palettes, energetic brushstrokes, and exaggerated textures in their works.

Expressionism refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s inner feelings or ideas. In expressionist art, color, in particular, can be highly intense and non-naturalistic, the brushwork is typically free and paint application tends to be generous and highly textured.

Expressionist art tends to be emotional and sometimes mystical and is believed to have made its debut in 1905. At this time, artists in Germany were responding to two important yet dissimilar phenomena: the prevalence and popularity of Impressionism and the seemingly chaotic state of the world in the years leading up to World War I.

The term Expressionism often specifically associated with modern German art (also referred to as German expressionism). German Expressionism German expressionism was an early twentieth-century German art movement that emphasized the artist’s inner feelings or ideas over replicating reality and was characterized by simplified shapes, bright colors, and gestural marks or brushstrokes.

There were two main groups of German expressionist artists: Die Brücke (the bridge) led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Source: Tate.