Expressionism is a school of art that began in Germany, in the early 1900s, around the 1910s. The art of this movement has a subjective perspective of the world that is mixed up with shapes and colors to express the mood of the artist at the time of the painting or their attitude towards the subject.
During this time there were 3 different wars in different locations around the world. One of which was World War I which was caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. The others were the First Balkan Wars which took place 1912 and 1913 between Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria, who called themselves the Balkan League, against the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and The Russian Revolution of 1917. There were also revolutions in
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Unlike Abstract Expressionism, it must have images the viewer can understand but the image can be distorted with shapes and colors from the personal, spontaneous, vived, mood-driven feelings of the artist. the style of expressionists became known for its harshness, boldness, and visual intensity. They would depict urban street scenes and other contemporary subjects in crowded, agitated ways obviously showing the instability and the atmosphere guided by the artist’s emotions toward the subject, which expressionism paintings are known to have.
Some common feelings expressed in paintings from this era are frustration, anxiety, disgust, discontent, violence. The feelings are generally a response to the ugliness, the crude banality, horrendous, and the confusion that the artists face in life. A favorite of german artists of this time were woodcuts, which were a kind of stamp, where the artist would carve a design using thick jagged lined and harsh tonal contrasts to create a image that you could use ink to print onto a paper multiple times and have it come out the exact same