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Expressionist Figurative Paintings

EXPRESSIONIST STYLE

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.

​​Find a collection of authentic Expressionist paintings, sculptures, prints and more art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Expressionist
Color:  Brown
Hugó Scheiber Theater Scene with a Dancer, Gouache ca. 1920
Located in Berlin, DE
Gouache on paper, 1920's by Hugò Scheiber ( 1873-1950 ) Hungary. Signed with pencil lower central: Scheiber H. Framed under glass. Height: 25.98 in ( 66 cm ), Width: 19.69 in ( 50 c...
Category

1920s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Paper

Meditadora en Fuschia
Located in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato
Carmen Gutierrez painting "Meditadora en Fuschia". mixed media on wood. Signed by the artist.
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Wood

Will Be The Wolf
Located in Delray Beach, FL
Will Be The Wolf. Monika Dalek Polish contemporary artist. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Diploma defended 2008 at the Faculty of Visual...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Canvas

Passage
Located in Miami, FL
Her work with signs, symbols and esoteric spirituality reflects her passion for the ancient past and represents a symbolic return to the ground from which we emerged. Her work creates a commentary about “beginnings” and the transmission of signs and emotions through visual elements evoking a spiritual essence to our scientific notion of etymology. After studying under Rolf Dürig...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Mexican Contemporary Artist Ricardo Ramirez - Pensativo
By Ricardo Ramírez
Located in Guadalajara, Jalisco
Pensativo Ricardo Ramírez Rodríguez Mixed Media on Canvas 80 x 100 cm 2007, MX Unframed
Category

Early 2000s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media

Arch and Pole - Square Figurative Painting with Earth Colors
Located in New York, NY
Gregory Kitterle's Arch and Pole is a 11.8 x 12-inch ink, oil, and pencil painting on board. It oscillates between figuration and abstraction, in a tridimensional space alternating b...
Category

2010s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Pencil, Board, Ink, Oil

Dream Mystique
Located in Delray Beach, FL
Dream Mystique Artist signed and titled, new frame. Wallace Bassford was an American painter and illustrator, born in 1900 in St. Louis Missouri, he attended the St. Louis School of ...
Category

1970s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Haven
Located in Buffalo, NY
An original oil on canvas diptych by American contemporary artist Mark Lavatelli created in 1996. 72" X 122"
Category

1990s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Blue Scarfed Woman - Figurative Abstract
Located in Soquel, CA
Bold abstract figurative of a figure in a blue scarf by San Francisco artist Michael William Eggleston (American, 20th c.)From a collection of his works. Si...
Category

Early 2000s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Picador
Located in New York, NY
During the artists carrier he only painted 2 Picador's of this size for the exhibition at Galerie Maurice Garnier, in Paris France, who was his dealer at the time. Shortly after the ...
Category

1970s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Paul Manes - Suzanna...Later, Paintings 2020
Located in Greenwich, CT
Paul Manes was born May 4, 1948, in Austin, Texas. He began his professional career in New York City in the early 1980s. His art has been widely exhibited in America and Europe and h...
Category

2010s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil

Girl & Plants Enamel Glazed Ceramic Plaque Israeli Artist Awret Naive Folk Art
Located in Surfside, FL
This is a rare ceramic plaque painted with enamel glaze by famed Israeli German artist Irene Awret (these are generally hand signed Awret Safed on the verso. I just have not opened the frame to check) the actual glazed ceramic is 10.25 X 14.75 inches. It depicts a girl or woman with potted plants, birds, pomegranates and other fruits and flowers in a naif, folk art style. Irène Awret was born to a Jewish family in Berlin called Spicker, the youngest of three children. Her mother died in 1927, when Irène was six years old. In 1937 she was forced to stop high school, due to the Nazi race laws. Because she could not continue her regular studies, her father sent her to study drawing, painting and art restoration with a Jewish painter. Among his students were a large number of German Jews who knew they would have to leave Germany within a short time and would require a profession to enable them to support themselves. When the situation grew worse, following the Kristallnacht (the first major attack on German and Austrian Jews in November 1938), her uncle decided to move to Belgium. In 1939 the situation became even worse - her father was fired from his job and the family were forced to leave their home. As a result, Awret's father tried to send her and her sister to Belgium, with the help of smugglers. The first smuggler proved to be a double agent and they were sent back from Aachen to Berlin. Two weeks later they made a second, successful, attempt to sneak across the border. Awret worked for a Dutch Jewish family as a maid. As she had her room and board there, she was able to save enough money to study art part-time at Brussels' Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts. A few months later Awret's father joined her and her financial situation became easier. She left her job and studied full-time, helping support herself with restoration work when it was available and by painting portraits to order. Later, Awret found a hiding place on a farm in Waterloo with a Jewish family who were connected with the underground. In January 1943 she had to return to Brussels, living with a false identity card which stated she was a married woman with two children. Awret succeeded in renting an attic without informing the police where she was - she told her landlady that she had been forced to flee her husband because he beat her. While there, she supported herself by restoring wooden sculptures. A Jewish informer gave her up to the Gestapo, accompanying the two Gestapo men who arrested her. Awret was able to take a bag containing food and drawing materials. She was detained in the Gestapo cellars in Brussels where she drew. Because there was nothing there to draw, she sketched her own hand (view this work). Awret was interrogated in order to reveal the hiding place of her father who was still in Brussels. The National Socialist regime was determined to persecute him, even though he had fought for Germany in World War I and been permanently disabled. They stepped up their torture and brought Awret before Hartmann, the head of the Gestapo in Brussels. When Hartmann saw her block of drawings, he asked her where she had studied art and halted the interrogation. Awret was placed in a narrow cell and then transferred to Malines camp, which the Belgian's called Mechelen. Malines was a transit camp to Auschwitz, regularly sending 2000 people at a time. Although she arrived just before Transport No. 20, Irène Awret avoided being included. Instead she was put to work in the leather workshop, decorating broaches. While she was there, Hartmann visited the camp and spotted her: "I could have discovered where your father is hiding," he told her. When her artistic talents became known, she was transferred to the Mahlerstube (artist's workshop) where she worked producing graphics for the Germans until the end of the war. When Carol (Karel) Deutsch (whose works are now on view at Yad Vashem) was sent from Mechelen to his death with his wife, he left young Irene his paintbox. Irene also recalls seeing the great painter Felix Nussbaum and his wife being pushed into a boxcar bound for the gas, and tells of the aftermath of the famous 20th Train incident, when a young Jewish doctor armed only with a pistol and helped by two unarmed friends with a lantern ambushed one of Mechelen's Auschwitz-bound trains carrying 1,618 Jews, most of whom had fled Eastern Europe for Belgium. Awret's job enabled her to paint and draw - mainly in pencil, but also in watercolors and oils. In the artists' workshop she met a Jewish refugee from Poland - Azriel Awret - who would later become her husband. Among the other artists in the workshop were Herbert von Ledermann-Vütemberg, a sculptor from an aristocratic family with Jewish roots, Léon Landau, and Smilowitz, who perished in the camps in the East. Irène and Azriel tried to bribe a German officer to prevent Smilowitz's deportation. Not only were they unsuccessful, but they were almost put onto the same train. Jacques Ochs was another artist with whom they became friends in the camp. Ochs, a French-born Protestant who lived in Belgium, was interned as a political prisoner. He remained in Belgium after liberation. After the war the Awrets immigrated to Israel and made their home in Safed. They continued to work, and were instrumental in founding Safed's artists' quarter. The Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters' House Museum) art collection holds works donated by Awret. These date from her time in Malines camp and from her stay in Brussels after the war, when she was in the company of orphans who had hidden while their parents were sent to Auschwitz. Her highly expressive works have made their way to exhibitions at theTel Aviv Museum, the Haifa Museum of Modern Art and the Modern Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as into the private collections of such individuals as Dr. Jonas Salk...
Category

1950s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Enamel

Untitled (Still Life)
Located in New York, NY
This refined and sophisticated still life painting was realized in Italy, circa 1950, by the esteemed Italian artist Romano Campagnoli. Executed in oil paint on canvas, the still lif...
Category

1950s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"The Kunafeh Merchant" Oil Painting 27" x 31" inch (1960) by Youssef Sida
Located in Culver City, CA
"The Kunafeh Merchant" Oil Painting 27" x 31" inch (1960) by Youssef Sida Signed and dated 1960 Youssef Sida 1922-1994 Born in 1922 in Damietta, and in ...
Category

20th Century Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood

Portrait of a man, an expressionist drawing by László Moholy-Nagy
By László Moholy-Nagy
Located in PARIS, FR
This recently rediscovered expressionist drawing by László Moholy-Nagy is part of a small group of drawings made by the artist early in his career, in Vienna and Berlin. The use of interlaced curves, typical of the artist's technique, gives this hieratic portrait a magnetic radiance, while the absence of any connection with the rest of the body evokes a profane Holy Face. 1. From Hungary to Chicago, the ardent life of László Moholy-Nagy Moholy-Nagy was born in Borsod, now known as Bácsborsód in Southern Hungary, in July 1895. He studied law in Budapest in 1913, when he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army to serve as an artillery officer on the Italian and Russian fronts. While serving at artillery observation posts, Moholy-Nagy was able to execute numerous drawings, recording his traumatic war experience, on the reverse of military-issued postcards which he could easily carry with him. In 1917, he was seriously wounded and hospitalized. The following year (around 1918 at the age of 23), he abandoned his plans to become a lawyer in favour of a career as an artist, with the encouragement of his friend, the art critic Iván Hevesy. The drawings executed in those early years reveal Moholy-Nagy's powerful Expressionist lines. In his autobiography of 1944, Abstract of an Artist, Moholy-Nagy explained his early figurative style, writing that contemporary art in those days was too chaotic and that and all the '-isms' were incomprehensible and puzzling to him. He was, however, experimenting with Dadaist compositions already in 1919 and then moved to Vienna and later to Berlin, where he would soon make his first works in his Constructivist style of the early 1920s. In Berlin he met photograph and writer Lucia Schultz who became his wife the next year. In 1922 he met Walter Gropius. During a vacation on the Rhome with Lucia, she introduced him to making photograms on light-sensitized paper. Walter Gropius invited him to teach at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1923 where he replaced Paul Klee as Head of the Metal Workshop. The Bauhaus became known for the versatility of its artists and Moholy-Nagy was no exception: throughout his career, he became proficient in the fiels of photography, typography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, film-making and industrial design. In 1928 Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus and established his own design studio in Berlin. He separated from his first wide Lucia in 1929. In 1931 he met actress and scriptwriter Sibylle Pietzsch. They married in 1932 and has two daughters, Hattula (born 1933) and Claudia. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, he was no longer allowed to work there. He moved his family to London in 1935. In 1937, on the recommendation of Walter Gropius, Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus, but the school closed in 1938. Moholy-Nagy resumed doing commercial design work, which he continued for the rest of his life. In 1939 Moholy-Nagy opened the School of Design in Chicago, which became in 1944 the Institute of Design, becoming part of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949. Diagnosed with leukemia in 1945, Moholy-Nagy died of the disease in Chicago in 1946. 2. Description of the artwork This drawing presents us with a frontal representation of a man in his thirties, whose penetrating gaze seems to stare at us. The face is highly symmetrical and is modelled by curved black lines. The very high forehead and the slightly dilated left pupil reinforce the very expressive character of the face. Like the Holy Face which appeared on the cloth stretched out to wipe Christ's face by Saint Veronica, only the model's face is represented on the cardboard piece. The curved lines that define the face, hollowing out the temples, the eyelids, the cheeks and the area around the mouth, create a kind of magnetic radiation around a median point located between the eyebrows. In some respects, this face may evoke one of the most famous representations of the Holy Face: the extraordinary engraving by Claude Mellan...
Category

1910s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Wax Crayon, Cardboard

Du Fond de Ce Voyage ou Les Pierres Me Parlent
Located in Long Island City, NY
Theo Tobiasse's Expressionist painting of several Jewish men in traditional clothing features the artist's signature use of bold colors and emotive forms. Artist: Theo Tobiasse Tit...
Category

1980s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

"Immaculate Perception" Two Abstract Skulls on a Red Field
By Breyten Breytenbach
Located in Houston, TX
Expressionist painting of two abstract skulls in flowers on a field of red. Framed in a white frame with a white matte. Painting was newly framed. Dime...
Category

1960s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Seated Nude
By Helge Helme
Located in New York, NY
Axel Henry Helge Helme (1894 Roskilde, Denmark 1987), Seated Nude, circa 1930, oil on canvas, original frame Son of a merchant, Helge Helme was admitted ...
Category

20th Century Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Shadows
Located in West Hollywood, CA
Presenting an original mixed media watercolor by Hungarian artist Bela Kadar. Bela Kadar was a historically important artist, is work was included as part of the degenerate art movement of Nazi Germany. His works appeared illustrated in the famous German arts magazine Der Sturm...
Category

1920s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Margit
By Otto Tetjus Tugel
Located in West Hollywood, CA
Presenting a rare oil on panel by German artist Otto Tugel. Otto Tugel worked in Germany before settling in New York. This is an early oil on panel, signed in monogram, dated 1925.
Category

1920s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

Expressionist figurative paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Expressionist figurative paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add figurative paintings created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Evelyne Ballestra, Julien Wolf, Stephen Basso, and Bernard Harmon. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Expressionist figurative paintings, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available.

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