The Earth as a Religion

Chaim Soutine - Avenue of Trees at Chartres - c. 1935 - oil on canvas - 75.9 cm (29.88 in.), Width: 65.1 cm (25.63 in.) - Private Collection (click photo for larger image)As the center of artistic interest in the early Modern era, Paris attracted a number of foreign painters. Chaim Soutine (1894-1943) came to Paris in 1913. Soutine's style included applying thickly encrusted paint—and his work exudes a “wild, chaotic spirit, sorrowful and vehement.” Soutine was a natural, though singular, Expressionist.

His religion was the earth. He painted the sacredness of the country with a passion that sometimes makes his art difficult to read.

Kandinsky: A Delicious Early Work

Wassily Kandinsky - Cemetery & Vicarage in Kochel, 1909, oil on cardboard, Lenbachhaus, Munich (click photo for larger image)Russian artist Wasilly Kandinsky (1866-1944) is ranked among the artists whose work changed the history of art in the early years of the 20th century. He was among those who created wholly abstract painting, and he was a fouder of The Blue Rider group of German Expressionists. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic. Kandinsky truly was an innovator, although his later works do not possess the same charm and lusciousness as the earlier painting, featured here, which looks almost edible! 

Otto Mueller - Die Brücke

Otto Mueller - Village Creek with Bathers - c. 1928 - Private collection - c. 1928 - Height: 90.4 cm (35.59 in.), Width: 116.2 cm (45.75 in.) - Distemper on burlap (click photo for larger image)Otto Mueller (1874-1930) was a leading member of the Die Brücke  (The Bridge) group, the first wave of German Expressioism. The works of this movement are characterized by an intensity of emotional and violent imagery not apparent in this particular work by Mueller. The group broke up at the onset of WWI, over artistic differences. It was followed by Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), which was a more positive strain of Expressionism that sought to express spirituality. Our featured work is much more of that ilk.

Edvard Munch: Intensely Evocative

Edvard Munch - Starry Night - Oil on canvas - 53 3/8 x 55 1/8 in. - The J. Paul Getty Museum

“Like many artists who came of age in the wake of Impressionism, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) began his career painting closely observed scenes of the world around him. But Munch's work took on an ever-deepening emphasis on subjectivity and an active rejection of visible reality.”

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The New Objectivity

Plate XVI from Ecce Homo - George Grosz - 1922-1923 (reproduced drawings and watercolors executed 1915-22). Illustrated book with one hundred offset lithographs, page (each approx.): 13 11/16 x 9 13/16" (34.8 x 25 cm); overall: 14 x 10 5/16 x 1 5/16" (35.5 x 26.2 x 3.3 cm).Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) was an Expressionist movement established in Germany, in the aftermath of World War I. Its founders were George Grosz and Otto Dix. Its artwork is characterized by a realistic style combined with a cynical and socially critical posture. Other artists associated with the movement included Christian Schad and Max Beckmann.

George Grosz (1893–1959) was a "German painter, draughtsman and illustrator. He is particularly valued for his caustic caricatures, in which he used the reed pen with notable success. Although his paintings are not quite as significant as his graphic art, a number of them are, nonetheless, major works.”

The Nun - Otto Dix - 1914. Oil on cardboard, 27 5/8 x 20 5/8" (70.2 x 52.4 cm). Gift of Gertrude W. Dennis. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, BonnGerman printmaker, watercolourist and painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) fused a variety of influences (from the masters of the Renaissance to the postmodernist Vincent van Gogh to develop his own unique brand of Expressionism.

Both of these artists started out being apolitical. However, their experiences in WWI changed their lives, their views, and their art in dramatic ways.