Expressionism a bold new movement

EXPRESSIONISM (A BOLD NEW MOVEMENT) | ARTS 10 - QUARTER 1-WEEK 2

Oct 26, 2020
EXPRESSIONISM (A BOLD NEW MOVEMENT)|ARTS 10 - QUARTER 1-WEEK 2

MELC: Identifies distinct characteristics of arts from the various art movements.
Identifies representative artists and Filipino counterparts from the various art movements.

In the early 1900s, there arose in the Western art world a movement that came to be known as expressionism. Expressionist artists created works with more emotional force, rather than with realistic or natural images.

To achieve this, they distorted outlines, applied strong colors, and exaggerated forms. They worked more with their imagination and feelings, rather than with what their eyes saw in the physical world.

Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person.

Among the various styles that arose within the expressionist art movements were:
 ; neo-primitivism
 ; fauvism
 ; dadaism
 ; surrealism
 ; social realism

Neo-primitivism

It was an art style that incorporated elements from the native arts of the South Sea Islanders and the wood carvings of African tribes which suddenly became popular at that time.
Among the Western artists who adapted these elements was Amedeo Modigliani, who used the oval faces and elongated shapes of African art in both his sculptures and paintings.

Fauvism
It was a style that used bold, vibrant colors, and visual distortions. Its name was derived from les fauves (“wild beasts”), referring to the group of French expressionist painters who painted in this style. Perhaps the most known among them was Henri Matisse.

Dadaism

It was a style characterized by dream fantasies, memory images, and visual tricks and surprises—as in the paintings of Marc Chagall and Giorgio de Chirico. Although the works appeared playful, the movement arose from the pain that a group of European artists felt after the suffering brought by World War I.
Wishing to protest against the civilization that had brought on such horrors, these artists rebelled against established norms and authorities, and against the traditional styles in art. They chose the child’s term for hobbyhorse, dada, to refer to their new “non-style.”

Surrealism

It was a style that depicted an illogical, subconscious dream world beyond the logical, conscious, physical one. Its name came from the term “super-realism,” with its artworks clearly expressing a departure from reality—as though the artists were dreaming, seeing illusions, or experiencing an altered mental state.

Many surrealist works depicted morbid or gloomy subjects, as in those by Salvador Dali. Others were quite playful and even humorous, such as those by Paul Klee and Joan Miro.

Social Realism

The movement known as social realism expressed the artist’s role in social reform. Here, artists used their works to protest the injustices, inequalities, immorality, and ugliness of the human condition. In different periods of history, social realists have addressed different issues: war, poverty, corruption, industrial and environmental hazards, and more.

Ben Shahn’s Miners’ Wives, for example, spoke out against the hazardous conditions faced by coal miners, after a tragic accident killed 111 workers in Illinois in 1947, leaving their wives and children in mourning.

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica has been recognized as the most monumental and comprehensive statement of social realism against the brutality of war. Filling one wall of the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, it was Picasso’s outcry against the German air raid of the town of Guernica in his native Spain.