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Expressionist Art

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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Item Ships From: Europe
Style: Expressionist
Iron Puddlers. South Wales Valleys. Steel Workers. Metalworkers. Heavy Industry.
Located in Sutton Poyntz, Dorset
Elin Siân Blake. Welsh ( b.1981). Iron Puddlers. Oil on box canvas. Signed lower right. Image size 19.7 inches x 15.6 inches ( 50cm x 39.5cm ). Frame size 20.9 inches x 16.9 inches ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Andre
Located in London, GB
Several Anastasia Kurakina's artworks have been included into the Vatican Museums collection since 2017 She has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London at bp portrait aw...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Paper, Laser, Inkjet, Giclée

Karl Nordström, Yellow Tulips, Signed and dated.
Located in Stockholm, SE
A beautiful still-life of yellow and red tulips in a vase by Karl Nordström (1855-1923), signed 'KN' and dated a tergo 1917. The vibrant flowers are standing in a vase which is placed on a cloth against a bluish-green background. Karl Fredrik Nordström was born on the Swedish west coast on the large island of Tjörn and was a Swedish painter known mostly for his landscape paintings. He came to Stockholm in 1875 and started to study at the Royal Art Academy, where he was tutored by Edvard Perséus, among others. There, he also became close friends with the artists Richard Bergh and Nils Kreuger...
Category

1910s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sir Jacob Epstein, Woodland scene, Jewish Modernist artist
Located in Harkstead, GB
Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) Little Monk Wood Signed Watercolour and touches of gouache 22 x 17 inches Please note, for international buyers, the glass will be removed to avoid any...
Category

Early 20th Century Expressionist Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

Vortex
Located in Miami, FL
Evelyne Ballestra's 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....
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Introspection, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas
Located in Yardley, PA
This piece is intense and vibrant, and painting this was a real emotional sanctuary for me. The wild and rich crimson and orange hues blend well with the flowing teals and blues. A t...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Acrylic

Vintage Mid-Century Modern Swedish Oil Painting -Portrait in an Interior, Framed
Located in Bristol, GB
PORTRAIT IN AN INTERIOR Size: 57 x 49.5 cm (including frame) Oil on board A beautifully executed and subtle mid century modernist portrait, executed in oil onto board. This semi-ab...
Category

1950s Expressionist Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Boys in the Band, French Provencal Coloured Drawing of a 'Mariachi' Musical Band
Located in Cotignac, FR
A crayon and chalk drawing of a band by French artist Jean Arène. The work is signed and dated top left. Presented in plain metal frame under glass. A charming coloured drawing of a Provencal musical band. The French equivalent of a 'mariachi band'. Two trumpet players, a tuba and a drum. The musicians are all wearing straw 'boater' hats and striped blazers. In the background is the terrace of a café with its green tables. Arene has captured, with a lightness of touch, all the excitement and animation of the scene. Jean Arène was a student of August Chabaud, a highly sought after French artist in Provence who in turn took his inspiration from Cezanne. After a stint in 1949 at the School of Fine Arts in Marseille, then a year in Paris in 1950 with the poster artist Paul Colin, Jean Arène returned to Marseille the following year where he founded the "Group of under 30' with Trofimoff, Trabuc, Zutter and Mela and began painting as an autodidact, while earning a living in advertising and decoration. His first exhibition dates from 1956. Then, from 1957, Jean Arène left the city for the countryside, which served as his base for many trips, often hitchhiking and backpacking, but always accompanied by a pencil and a sketchbook: Spain, Morocco in 1957, West Africa in 1960, (followed by an exhibition in Dakar), Northern Europe (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lapland , Lofoten, Netherlands and Belgium) In 1963 a trip to Tunisia. Then in 1966 his first retrospective in Toulon. In 1970 Arène left for the United States and Mexico, followed two years later by West Africa again: Tassili, the Sahara and Algeria. He exhibited extensively in Provence and the Gard: Aix-en-Provence, Uzès, Avignon, La Ciotat...
Category

Late 20th Century Expressionist Art

Materials

Paper, Chalk, Crayon, Oil Pastel, Pastel, Wax Crayon

Original Oil, Golden Summer-Sunlit , Award UK Artist, landscape, expressionism
Located in London, GB
The painting was painted Plein Air, in Artist's own garden of the memorial roses she planted. This is Rosa Albertine, the first Old English variety Artist Shizico Yi planted in her garden in 2016, before her late dog died. Old English Roses...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Gold

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, original oil-UK award artist-Summer Roses
Located in London, GB
A rare chance to collect an original oil painting by Shizico Yi at the lowest price possible. We offer the original artwork with a artist’s lifetime Warranty too! Taking on the inspiration of the legendary poet, Dylan Thomas, the poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, is a painting celebrates life in its ageing; as Rosa Albertine only flowers once in early Summer with the most festive blooms and heavenly scents, a symbol of a fully lived life. About the Painting : Painted Plein Air, in Artist's own garden of her very own planted memorial roses. This is Rosa Albertine, the first Old English variety Artist Shizico Yi planted in 2016 in her garden before her late dog died; Old English Roses...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Gesso, Canvas, Wood, Oil, Acrylic

Pink flower field., Painting, Acrylic on Canvas
Located in Yardley, PA
Pink flower field. Summer landscape: a pink field, a celebration of bright flowers and herbs on a summer day creates an atmosphere of relaxation, harmony and bliss. Abstract expressi...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Acrylic

Still Life Painting of Green Plant by Cubist Fauvist British Artist
Located in Preston, GB
Still Life Painting of Green Plant by Cubist Fauvist British Artist, Steve Capper Art measures 20 x 30 inches Frame measures 26 x 36 inches Presented in a high quality black wooden moulding Steve Capper attended Manchester’s High School of Art in 1955, the Manchester College of Art in 1962 and Bretton Hall College in 1965. He taught painting for thirty years as head of a large art faculty in an Oldham comprehensive school, before taking early retirement in 1996 to concentrate on producing his own work. Capper produces on-the-spot sketches which are then taken into his studio where he re-works them into a painting. Both his landscapes and his still-life paintings reflect the influences of the cubists and the fauves. The work of Picasso, Braque and Matisse are amongst his major influences. Capper still lives and works near Oldham, in the Pennines...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Cotton Canvas, Mixed Media, Acrylic, Board

Still Life Painting of Two Plants on an Orange Table by Fauvist British Artist
Located in Preston, GB
Still Life Painting of Two Plants on an Orange Table by Fauvist British Artist, Steve Capper Art measures 20 x 28 inches Frame measures 25.5 x 33.5 inches Presented in a high quality black wooden moulding Steve Capper attended Manchester’s High School of Art in 1955, the Manchester College of Art in 1962 and Bretton Hall College in 1965. He taught painting for thirty years as head of a large art faculty in an Oldham comprehensive school, before taking early retirement in 1996 to concentrate on producing his own work. Capper produces on-the-spot sketches which are then taken into his studio where he re-works them into a painting. Both his landscapes and his still-life paintings reflect the influences of the cubists and the fauves. The work of Picasso, Braque and Matisse are amongst his major influences. Capper still lives and works near Oldham, in the Pennines...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Cotton Canvas, Mixed Media, Acrylic, Board

Femmes Sur La Plage, Expressionist French Oil On Canvas Beach Scene
Located in Cotignac, FR
Mid Century French oil on canvas of two couples enjoying a day at the beach by Jef Friboulet. Signed bottom right, titled, dated and signed dedication to the rear of the canvas, presented in fine hand decorated and gilt Florentine wood frame. With his characteristic charm Friboulet has captured a scene of two couples enjoying a trip to the beach. In the foreground a couple seem to be all bundled up and under an umbrella, the figures highlighted by the contrast in colours between the vibrant red and the black. In the background another couple, again in red and black, this time one lady has her bathing costume on and the other sitting on a foldable picnic...
Category

1960s Expressionist Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Vintage Mid-Century Swedish Framed Oil Painting - Still Life with Tulips
Located in Bristol, GB
Still Life with Tulips Size: 51 x 46 cm (including frame) Oil on board A vibrant and uplifting mid-century still life composition, painted in o...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Abstract Landscape Painting entitled Pink Hill by Cubist Fauvist British Artist
Located in Preston, GB
Abstract Landscape Painting entitled Red Hills Cubist Fauvist British Artist, Steve Capper Art measures 16 x 20 inches Frame measures 25 x 29 inches Steve Capper attended Manche...
Category

2010s Expressionist Art

Materials

Mixed Media, Acrylic, Board, Canvas, Paint, Cotton Canvas

Dreamy landscape with nymph - Expressionist Oil, Nude by Giorgios Gounaropoulos
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
A wonderful expressionist oil on original canvas circa 1930 by Greek artist Giorgios Gounaropoulos. The piece depicts a nude woman beside trunk of a cut tree in a sparse landscape. T...
Category

1930s Expressionist Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

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 Art

Materials

Wax Crayon, Cardboard

Vintage Framed Swedish Expressionist Landscape Oil Painting - River Road
Located in Bristol, GB
RIVER ROAD 50 x 59 cm (including frame) Oil on Board An emotive expressionist mid century landscape in oil, painted onto board. Using a rich and earthy palette, the artist has used short and painterly brushstrokes to create this restful composition. A single rural path runs along the edge of a river, disappearing off into the distance. The atmosphere is quiet, calm and relaxed. The dusky tones of the sky where the artist has used touches of light pink allude to the early morning, or perhaps even a quiet evening. There is also a still life painting of bottles...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Art

Materials

Oil, Board

The Artist In His Atelier, Mid Century, Ecole De Nice
Located in Cotignac, FR
French Mid Century work on card by Sylvain Vigny. Depicting an artist (self portrait?) in his studio with his subject and muses, like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Reminiscent of the drawings of Picasso and Matisse who were his contemporaries and neighbours on the Cote D'Azur at this period. The painting is signed and dated bottom left. In period chrome edged frame, currently under glass. If Sylvain Vigny had stayed in Paris in 1934 instead of moving to Nice on the Côte d’Azur, his highly imaginative and original work might be better known. Comparisons with better-known modernist artists including Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Rouault and Raoul Dufy set him in an appropriate and favourable context. A self-taught artist, he grew up in Vienna and emigrated to France in the 1920s, living in Paris from 1929 to 1934. After he had moved to Nice early in 1934, he exhibited in galleries along the Mediterranean coast and in Switzerland, with major exhibitions in New York in 1938 and at the Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris in 1948. Sylvain Vigny was part of an important artistic community in Nice, which included Jean Moulin who owned the Galerie d’Art Roman, the artist Jean Cassarini, writers Pierre and Jacques Prévert, filmmaker Nikos Papatakis, and jazz musician Django Reinhardt...
Category

1950s Expressionist Art

Materials

Ink, Watercolor, Gouache, Cardboard

Expressionist art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Expressionist art 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 art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of orange, blue, purple, green and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Iryna Kastsova, George Grosz, Stephen Basso, and Marc Chagall. 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 art, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available.

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