The artist group Brücke challenged the strict ideals and traditional values of the early 20th century. With vivid colours and simplified forms, they gave expression to internal feelings, rather than external reality. “German Expressionism: The Artist Group Brücke and the Beginnings of Modernism” brings together, for the first time in the Nordic region, Germany’s most important contribution to international modernism.
The artist group Brücke was founded in 1905 in Dresden by four young, rebellious architecture students. With their collective way of living and working, they radically broke with the prevailing strict moral norms and aesthetic ideals of the German Empire. Brücke’s art marks the beginning of German Expressionism, which would eventually be recognised as Germany’s most important contribution to international modernism.
In “German Expressionism: The Artist Group Brücke and the Beginnings of Modernism”, you will encounter paintings, drawings, watercolours, woodcuts, and sculptures by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the four founders of Brücke, as well as by Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and Otto Mueller, members who joined later.
“For the first time, the Nordic audience is now given the opportunity for a deeper encounter with the artist group Brücke.” –Iris Müller-Westermann, the exhibition’s curator and senior curator at Moderna Museet
Emotions, man, and nature
Brücke developed a painting style with vivid colours, simplified forms, broken-up perspectives, and large colour fields that express feelings rather than reproducing an external reality.
The group was inspired by artists such as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Edvard Munch. They worked with motifs such as man and nature, painted portraits and self-portraits, engaged in nude studies, and depicted life in the studio, striving to make life and art merge.
After they moved to the capital Berlin in late 1911, urban life also became an important motif.
German Expressionism The Artist Group Brücke and the Beginnings of Modernism
Sep 21, 2024 – Mar 9, 2025
Moderna Museet
Stockholm, Sweden
