Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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that he was interested in this work, it is worth discussing the origins and development of
German Expressionism as a historical movement, and attempting to reach an
understanding of its stylistic characteristics, and more importantly, the world-view that
informed the movement and connected it with Romanticism.
“Die Brücke” (“The Bridge”) was a young group of architecture rather than art students
who wanted to revolutionise the somewhat conservative cultural scene in Germany at
the beginning of the twentieth century by forming an artistic community who lived and
worked together towards a common aim. They were fascinated by “primitive” art and
the art of the Gothic period, especially by Dürer, a fifteenth century artist best known
for his woodcuts. These young artists wanted to preserve the freshness of their
sensations and the strength and honesty of their vision, and to reject not only the
conservative approach of the artistic establishment, but also the conservative political
beliefs of the time. They saw creativity not technique as the most important aspect of
art, and wanted art to be accessible to the masses, not just the elite of society. Their art
was characterized by strong, bold colours and forms, often outlined in black. Some
Expressionist artists such as Lionel Feininger (an American artist who worked for a
time in Germany) made use of distortion in elongated shapes and unusual angles, a
characteristic that was to have an influence on the sets of Expressionist film.
A later group of Expressionist artists was “der Blaue Reiter” (“the Blue Rider”) group,
consisting of a number of artists who were to become very influential in terms of the
development of twentieth century art. These included Franz Marc, Paul Klee and
Wassily Kandinsky (who was one of a group of Russian emigré artists). The artists of
Der Blaue Reiter were much more individual in their styles than the artists of Die
Brücke and they were more interested in the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of art
than earlier Expressionists. What they had in common was an intense desire to give
expression to personal feelings and emotions - the inner world of the artist.
During this period there was a great deal of cross-fertilisation of ideas from one art form
to another and the Expressionist movement extended from fine arts to music, literature
and theatre, and finally to the cinema. Examples of this cross-fertilisation included the
rejection of the usual codes of realism in Expressionist painting, theatre and films,
which paralleled the abandonment of tonality in Expressionist music. John Willett
regards this “extraordinary concentration of artistic effort from a number of different