Ever heard of a political art group? Artists who use art, particularly painting, to influence or to move people to action? I have read of those in our history class before---it was quite boring then. I used to think of it as an exaggeration of a hero’s life. Until I read one of my favorite music artist’s biography. His father was a leader of Chicano artists,
“Los Four”. It’s a sort of a mural movement. But this is beside point. My objective for writing this article is to bring more light into “die brücke”, a group of German expressionist artists, which marked beginning of modern art in Germany.Since early part of twentieth century German Expressionism was very popular and it influenced most of movements to oppose Impressionists.
Die Brücke, German words meaning “the bridge”, was founded in Dresden by architectural students lead by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in 1905. Erich Heckel, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff gathered regularly in Kirchner’s studio. They were later joined by Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein.
The group was called “brücke” because members have common interests and ideology. The bridge also symbolizes link, since one of their objective is to link to future and to use art to change society. Through art, they linked German history with their own cultural past. They despised academic traditions and strict constraints of leading academies, realism and impressionism.
Although, most of members of Brücke were not trained artists, they were able to express their feelings and imaginations through harsh and orgiastic colors, particularly black and white contrasts, distorted shapes and lines, exaggerated forms, and anti-illusionistic perspective. The subjects of their artwork include urban cabarets and dancehalls, mostly in nudes.
