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Art & Art History vocabulary · Movements & Periods

Expressionism

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/ɪkˈspreʃənɪzəm/nounCommon term

In art & art history, Expressionism means: An early-twentieth-century movement, strongest in Germany, in which artists distorted shapes and used intense colours to express emotions rather than show the world as it looks.

In Turkish: Ekspresyonizm, Dışavurumculuk

How it is used

The German groups Die Brücke (founded 1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) are central, and Munch is seen as a forerunner. The word is also used for any art with strong emotional distortion. Abstract Expressionism is a separate American movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

Example sentences

  1. Expressionism uses harsh colours and jagged lines to show anxiety and alienation.

  2. Kirchner's Berlin street scenes are among the best-known works of German Expressionism.

Common collocations

  • German Expressionism
  • Abstract Expressionism
  • Expressionist painting
  • Expressionist woodcut
  • art movementA group of artists who share similar ideas, aims or styles during a particular period, and the art they produce, such as Impressionism or Cubism.
  • modern artArt made roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, when artists broke with academic traditions and experimented with new styles, subjects and materials.
  • avant-gardeArtists, works or ideas that are new and experimental and challenge accepted rules; the word is French for the front part of an army.
  • Post-ImpressionismA term for the work of artists such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat, who started from Impressionism in the 1880s but moved towards stronger structure, symbolism or expression.

More terms: Movements & Periods

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