Otto Müller 1874-1930 | Expressionist painter | The Die Brücke Group

The Die Brücke Group, The Bridge, was a group of german expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. The seminal group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and the creation of expressionism. Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves. Both movements shared interests in primitivist art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic. Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction. The Die Brücke artists' emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their french counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.

Emil Nolde 1867-1956 | The Expressionist Garden

Born to a peasant family, Emil Nolde carved wood for a living and came late to painting. Though briefly a member of Die Brücke 1906-07, he was essentially a solitary painter. Fervently religious and racked by a sense of sin, he created such works as Dance Around the Golden Calf 1910, in which the figures' erotic frenzy and demonic faces are rendered with deliberately crude draftsmanship and dissonant colours. On an ethnological expedition to the East Indies 1913-14, he was impressed by the power of the art he saw there. Back in Europe, he produced brooding landscapes and colourful flowers. As a printmaker he was noted especially for the stark black-and-white effect of his crudely incised woodcuts.

Emil Nolde 1867-1956 | German expressionist painter | The Die Brücke Group

Born to a peasant family, he carved wood for a living and came late to painting. Though briefly a member of Die Brücke 1906-07, he was essentially a solitary painter. Fervently religious and racked by a sense of sin, he created such works as Dance Around the Golden Calf 1910, in which the figures' erotic frenzy and demonic faces are rendered with deliberately crude draftsmanship and dissonant colours. On an ethnological expedition to the East Indies 1913-14, he was impressed by the power of the art he saw there. Back in Europe, he produced brooding landscapes and colourful flowers. As a printmaker he was noted especially for the stark black-and-white effect of his crudely incised woodcuts.