The Clown Bajazzo

Emil Betzler was a German Expressionist painter and graphic artist, author and teacher. He belongs to the generation of Chagall, Ernst, Dix and Grosz and was a friend of Germany's best-known Expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker Max Beckmann. Betzler was a co-founder of the artist group Ghat. In 1933, Betzler was accused by the National Socialists of being a representative of deformed, expressionistic, Bolshevik art, a spy of the Jews and a member of the KPD. The Nazis had branded his work as Degenerate Art. In 1967, Betzler was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit. Paintings by Emil Betzler are rarely seen in the art market. His artwork was shown in 32 galleries and museums inter alia in Frankfurt/M., Düsseldorf, Berlin, Ancona and Paris and thereof eight solo exhibitions.

While “expressionist” is used to describe any art that avoids naturalism and instead employs a bold use of flattened forms and intense brushwork, Expressionist art formally describes early-20th-century work from Europe that drew on Symbolism and confronted issues such as urbanization and capitalism. Expressionist artists experimented in paintings and prints with skewed perspectives, abstraction and unconventional, bright colors to portray how isolating and anxious the world felt rather than how it appeared. 

Between 1905 and 1920, Austrian and German artists, in particular, were inspired by Postimpressionists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh in their efforts to strive for a new authenticity in their work. In its geometric patterns and decorative details, Expressionist art was also marked by eclectic sources like German and Russian folk art as well as tribal art from Africa and Oceania, which the movement’s practitioners witnessed at museums and world’s fairs.

Groups of artists came together to share and promote the themes now associated with Expressionism, such as Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden, which included Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and investigated alienation and the dissolution of society in vivid color. In Munich, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, instilled Expressionism with a search for spiritual truths. In his iconic painting The Scream, prolific Norwegian painter Edvard Munch conveyed emotional turmoil through his depiction of environmental elements, such as the threatening sky.

Expressionism shifted around the outbreak of World War I, with artists using more elements of the grotesque in reaction to the escalation of unrest and violence. Printmaking was especially popular, as it allowed artists to widely disseminate works that grappled with social and political issues amid this time of upheaval. Although the art movement ended with the rise of Nazi Germany, where Expressionist creators were labeled “degenerate,” the radical ideas of these artists would influence Neo-Expressionism that emerged in the late 1970s with painters like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente.

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