German expressionist sculpture
The volume presents a survey of German expressionist sculpture. Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. The term is sometimes suggestive of emotional angst. The Expressionist emphasis on individual perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as naturalism and impressionism. This work contains more than one hundred and twenty examples of German Expressionist sculpture by thirty-three artists. Included are sculptures by artists recognized for their work in this medium -- Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Georg Kolbe, Renee Sintenis, Gerhard Marcks -- as well as sculpture by such figures as Kathe Kollwitz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Egon Schiele, and Otto Freundlich, whose reputations are based on their painting and graphic oeuvres. A significant number of works by lesser-known artists, who belonged to the second generation of Expressionism in the twenties among them Herbert Garbe, Conrad Felixmuller, Paul Rudolf Henning, William Wauer, and Christoph Vollare also examined. Included in the catalog are examples of the artists' varied writings as well as evaluations by contemporary critics, scholars, writers, and poets. Seven essays and excerpts from contemporary texts, published in translation for the first time, highlight the German Expressionists' concern with particular materials and their attraction to African and Oceanic art.
