Expressionism & Early Modernism

The name came after the pictures and never fitted neatly; it only took hold around 1913. One account credits the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček, who set it against Impressionism in 1910: "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself." Two German groups gave it shape: Die Brücke, founded in Dresden in 1905 by four artists led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Der Blaue Reiter, formed in Munich in 1911. Its painters looked to Munch, van Gogh and African art, and to the Fauves' bold colour in Paris.

Munch painted love, anxiety and jealousy as one connected cycle, the Frieze of Life, and the German Expressionists took up his belief that art should come from the urge "to open his heart". In The Scream, look for how little is described: broad bands of garish colour, simplified forms and a high viewpoint do all the work.

Kandinsky's route ran from bright, recognisable landscapes to the Improvisations and Compositions that made him a pioneer of abstraction. The Blue Rider itself grew out of a rejection: in December 1911 a Munich jury turned down his Composition V, so he, Münter, Franz Marc and others hung a rival show in the rooms next door. He later traced the name to Marc's love of horses, his own of riders, and a shared love of blue, for him the colour of spirituality. The war ended the group in 1914, and Marc and August Macke were killed in combat.

The movement faded in Germany under Hitler, whose regime removed 82 of Munch's works from German museums. After the 1937 "degenerate art" exhibition in Munich, American museums began buying and showing more and more Expressionist work.