The first of two Expressionist movements began in Germany around the early 20th century, called Die Brücke, or ‘The Bridge’. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, one of the founders of ‘The Bridge” felt that German art was the ‘bridge to the future’. The artists who were involved this movement pulled inspiration from Van Gogh, Gaugin, and primitive art. However, this group fell apart around 1915 due to artistic differences, such as Max Beckmann who disliked both the term and movement, and to the onset of World War 1. Expressionism is prevalent to various art forms such as painting, thearter, dance, film, architecture and dance. Throughout these art forms, expressionism could be described as art that focuses on emotion rather than or more than physical reality. In paintings, there are distortions in physical reality in order to portray an emotion. Coupled with exaggerated imagery, expressionists used symbolic colors to further convey their emotions.
Despite disagreeing with the expressionist artistic agenda, in that he excluded expressionistic painters when selecting entries from the 1910 Berlin Secession
exhibition with the idea that he was against abstraction, Max Beckmann was a leading figure in the movement. He served in World War 1 and many of his paintings, although not horrifically portrayed, still depicted the violence and pain in war.
Die Synagoge by Max Beckmann- 1919
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