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[Musica] [Musica] I “Brücke,” which is an avant-garde movement, is part of what is commonly called Expressionism. In this case, we are talking about German Expressionism. The “Brücke” emerged concurrently with the French Fauves group in 1905, and it shares with it the idea of painting as a strongly subjective interpretation of reality and the desire to express this personal vision through the deformation of figures and the alteration of colors. Differently from the Fauves, the state of mind of the artists and their relationship with reality are dramatic and negative. The painting of these German artists is dominated by dark and contrasting tones.
The term Expressionism derives from the Latin “exprimere,” to bring out, and these artists intend to represent the reality that is inside and is not known to the eyes. Art must show the interiority of man, tell the secret world hidden in the human soul. In the first decade of the twentieth century, throughout Central and Northern Europe, various movements of Expressionist inspiration were formed. In the manifesto of Die Brücke, we can read this declaration of intent: “With faith in an evolution, in a new generation of creators and art consumers, we summon the entire youth; and as young bearers of the future, we intend to conquer the freedom to work, to live, opposing the old established powers and our own. Whoever knows how to directly and without falsifications shape what drives him to create.”
Die Brücke is the first important Expressionist movement formed in Germany, however, it was short-lived. Founded in 1905, it dissolved in 1913. This group declared itself against outdated principles in art as in society; confident in a future of change, intent on recovering primitive spontaneity, a supporter of the spiritual dimension of the human interior, desirous of escaping from present reality. These artists represent nature as an unspoiled place far from the disharmony of the contemporary world, and that is why many of them address social issues and represent the condition of alienation of man in large cities. Provocative Kirchner, Schmidt, Heckel, and Müller did not want to generate dissent; they wanted to provoke this feeling in those who observe. The painting of these artists is influenced by the work of Munch, who had exhibited in Berlin and Dresden and who opened the doors to a new figuration of interiority. Kirchner wrote, “We are the bearers of the future and we want to create for ourselves freedom of life, of movement, against the old forces that have been in effect for a long time. Anyone who directly and honestly reproduces that force that drives him to create belongs to us.” “Brücke” means “the bridge,” and the artists who belong to it want to create a link between interiority and exteriority, between the present and the future—a future of hope, free from pain and hypocrisy.
Moreover, Germany at the beginning of the century was traversed by profound social tensions, and protests were the object of heavy censorship by the government. Expressionist painting is characterized by the alteration of space and perspective; the definition of sharp, clean outlines, often highlighted by black strokes; the use of strong, contrasting colors. Metropolises, street life, the circus are the stimulus to reflect on the solitude of modern man and the dissoluteness of society. “The Circus,” a painting by Erich Heckel from 1909, shows circus artists performing their acts inside a large circular track under a tent. The colors are bright and contrasting—red and green, blue and orange—and the space is completely open. The attention is on the figures. [Musica]
The artists of the Die Brücke movement denounce the lack of spiritual values in contemporary society, suffocated by the false myths of money and progress. They affirm that painting should not copy reality but interpret it and arouse reflection on it. They use strong and unnatural colors, summary delivery, incisive, unfinished; they deform the figures, make perspective disappear to depict depth, and use chiaroscuro to model volumes. They reject the concept of beauty as harmony. Lithography became, for the German Expressionists in particular, a useful tool to achieve their goal. This technique had already been used by realist painters, and in particular by Daumier, who had used it to create images to be published in newspapers and magazines, ensuring rapid dissemination. From the second half of the nineteenth century, lithography found great application in the field of advertising graphics, which had become a new artistic sector. Posters were created announcing theatrical performances and cabaret shows, but also billboards for industrial products and book covers or magazine illustrations. A new space was created for the artist—that of mass communication and collaboration with the world of industry. The lithographic image is characterized by well-defined figures with a continuous outline and uniform colors. The images are flat or modeled by essential chiaroscuro. The depth of space is absent or rendered through the superposition of planes. [Musica]
In woodcut, the line has an accentuated thickness and is not regular. The mark is very contrasting, often angular; for this reason, it was a technique much appreciated by the artists of Die Brücke. Moreover, thanks to printing from a single matrix, numerous copies could be obtained, and this allowed them to reach a rather vast public to whom they could communicate their ideas. The idea of raising the masses to the achievement of a superior objective is already in the Die Brücke manifesto, created by Kirchner, in which it reads: “We call on all young people to stand together.”
Emil Nolde, one of the most important artists of Die Brücke, arrived late at artistic maturity and became attached to the group at almost 40 years old. He preferred the solitude of a hermit, and the German Middle Ages was for him a constant source of inspiration. He attributed great importance to the land and places of origin, as demonstrated by the fact that he decided to change his surname from Hansen to Nolde, which was the name of his native village in northern Germany. Fascinated by Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Munch, he developed a mystical and tragic painting, predominantly representing religious themes interpreted in a provocative way and landscapes that appear shaken by the energy of the primordial forces of nature. In “Dance Around the Golden Calf” (1910), for example, he depicts dancing women in primitive contexts, a scene in which the bodies show themselves in their almost wild animality.
In “Autumn Evening” (1924), we can observe a new way of describing nature in the history of art. The natural landscape has always directly shown the relationship between the artist and reality. For the German Expressionists, this subject represented, on the one hand, a search for purity, the desire to return to a time uncontaminated by civilization; on the other, a way to amplify their feeling of anguish. At a first glance at this canvas, it is difficult to identify the exact moment of the day—perhaps sunset, perhaps it is already night, considering the deep black of the northern sky. Nolde did not use colors realistically but as an expression of an inner state. He used black, yellow, and two complementary colors, red and green. Even though the sky is reflected in the water, there is no precision; the reflection seems to expand and mount in color.
Carl Schmidt-Rottluff was the most independent artist of the group. He was particularly interested in nature, representing it with a very simplified and at the same time monumental stroke. He mainly used very rich reds and yellows with seemingly uncoordinated brushstrokes. “Bathers on the Beach,” reproduced here, is a clear example. In addition to painting, he experimented with other techniques such as woodcut and was influenced by African sculpture. It was he who convinced Nolde to join the Die Brücke group.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born in 1880. He studied architecture in Dresden and painting in Munich and showed himself attracted to the Neo-Impressionists and the old masters. It was in Dresden in 1905 that he founded Die Brücke with other artists. Having moved to Berlin in 1911, he participated in the second exhibition of the Blaue Reiter, thus fostering a link between the two artistic groups. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was exempted from military service due to a psychic and nervous collapse. Towards the end of the 1920s, psychic anxieties and physical decay began to get the better of him. In 1937, some of his works were included in the Nazi exhibition on “Degenerate Art,” which caused him further anguish, leading him to take his own life in June 1938. His paintings are an unrelenting critique of the society of the time, both for the violence of the pictorial language and for the themes treated: nightclubs, circuses, city views, degraded urban environments.
In Kirchner's paintings, scenes of city and street are frequent. The modern metropolis is the place where the incommunicability of man is manifested, who is shown as a mannequin or an impersonal mask. This is evident, for example, in the painting “Dresden Streets: Five Women on the Street” (1913). It portrays five women dressed with artificial elegance who seem almost like masked mannequins. The scene is set in a nocturnal atmosphere, and the intent is precise—the desire to unmask and denounce social reality. The colors are acidic and disharmonious; green dominates, but all the shades are made darker by the mixture with black. The framing is cut in the photographic style, and the figures are close to the foreground. The observer is drawn into the space of the painting, enters the narrative, participates in the inner event. All this is underlined by a nervous and sharp stroke.