Monday, March 27, 2023

expressionist graphic art

printmaking and drawing were integral to Expressionism on both practical and conceptual levels. 

why? prints and drawings were quicker and less expensive to produce.

woodcut was the ideal artistic vehicle. with a long tradition in european art, and so represented a return to an older, truer form of expression. 

Die Brücke artists strove to distance themselves from the traditional academic style of the time while manipulating traditional subject matter to their own end. undergoing a dramatic transformation at the hands of the Expressionists, portraiture became a depiction of the sitter's (and artist’s) inner psyche.


what do we get here? 

* exaggerations of features, gestures, and expressions, 

* formal distortion,

* emphasis on the physical attributes to provoke an emotional response,

* flatness,

*angularity,

* primitive,

* existential.