Expressionism is an artistic tendency that transforms visible reality through distortion, intense colour and psychological pressure. Rather than reproducing the external world faithfully, Expressionist artists use form to communicate anxiety, desire, alienation, violence and emotional experience.
Expressionism developed most forcefully in early twentieth-century Germany and Austria through artists associated with Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and the earlier work of Edvard Munch expanded its investigation of the unstable body and modern psychological life.
Its influence continued beyond the historical movement through post-war figuration, Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism and contemporary painting. Artists such as Francis Bacon demonstrated how distortion could remain a powerful language for confronting flesh, sexuality, mortality and trauma.
This archive brings together critical essays, artist profiles and analyses of Expressionist and expressionist-influenced artworks across modern and contemporary art.
Francis Bacon and George Dyer Francis Bacon’s Triptych May-June 1973 reconstructs George Dyer’s final hours through three panels in which grief, guilt and death acquire a physical form.
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Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) Unveiling the Inner Turmoil: Francis Bacon’s Interpretation of Velázquez’s “Portrait of Pope Innocent X” Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Portrait
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