Expressionism

Sources: MoMA: Expressionism, MoMA: Die Brücke, MoMA: Der Blaue Reiter, MoMA: Kirchner's Street, Dresden, MoMA: Klee's Twittering Machine, and The Met: Schiele's Seated Woman, Back View.

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  Oil paint

  Kirchner's Street, Dresden (1908, reworked 1919) is a large oil-on-canvas city scene. MoMA relates its compressed crowd and clashing colors to Kirchner's experience of Dresden, turning the street into a tense encounter with modern urban life rather than a neutral view.

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  Watercolor paint

  Paul Klee's Twittering Machine (1922) combines watercolor with an oil-transfer drawing and ink on paper. Translucent color fields sit beside thin linear marks, contrasting the birdlike forms with the mechanical-looking device; MoMA's medium record documents this mixed process on the sheet.

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  Gouache paint

  Egon Schiele's Seated Woman, Back View (1917) combines gouache and watercolor with graphite on paper. The Met describes Schiele's works on paper as studies in line, composition, and gesture, showing how his expressive figure practice extended beyond oil paintings in the studio.

Sources: MoMA on Kirchner's oil painting, MoMA on Klee's watercolor and transfer process, The Met on Schiele's gouache and watercolor, and National Gallery of Art on Schiele's watercolor and gouache work on paper.

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  Wassily Kandinsky

  Kandinsky's early Expressionist paintings loosened recognizable subjects into emphatic color, line, and rhythm, while his later works moved toward abstraction. His writing and teaching gave this search a theoretical frame, but individual canvases remain grounded in the visual force of their shapes and contrasts.

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  Paul Klee

  Klee's paintings combine signs, geometric forms, and changing color into small, carefully balanced visual worlds. His Expressionist and Blaue Reiter connections supported a broad experiment with abstraction, nature, and music, while his playful marks keep each composition distinct from a fixed style.

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  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

  Kirchner's Berlin street scenes compress fashionable figures into sharp outlines and clashing color, conveying the nervous pace of urban life. As a Die Brücke founder, he carried the group's expressive simplification into a modern city setting rather than limiting it to landscapes or studio nudes.

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  Egon Schiele

  Schiele's self-portraits and figure studies use angular contours, exposed poses, and unsettled spaces to make the body feel psychologically charged. His Expressionist line is less concerned with anatomical idealization than with tension, so even a seated figure can seem physically and emotionally exposed.

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  Franz Marc

  Marc's animal paintings use bold color and simplified forms to suggest an underlying spiritual order in nature. His Blaue Reiter work differs from the urban concerns of Die Brücke, giving Expressionism a distinct focus on animals, landscape, and the symbolic meaning of color.

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  Gabriele Münter

  Münter's Bavarian landscapes and portraits use strong outlines and simplified color to give ordinary places a direct visual presence. Her work within Der Blaue Reiter helped shape German Expressionism, while its subjects and handling remain distinct from Kandinsky's move toward nonrepresentational abstraction.

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  Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

  Schmidt-Rottluff's landscapes and figures use broad areas of color, forceful contours, and simplified forms rather than naturalistic finish. As a Die Brücke founder, he helped make expressive distortion a shared group language, while his woodcut practice sharpened the graphic quality of his painted work.

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  Erich Heckel

  Heckel's coastal scenes and bathers simplify bodies and landscape into clear shapes bounded by strong contours. As a Die Brücke painter, he used expressive color and direct handling to move away from academic polish, making outdoor subjects carry emotional intensity.

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  Oskar Kokoschka

  Kokoschka's portraits use restless brushwork and shifting color to suggest the sitter's inner life rather than a composed public likeness. His Expressionist practice also extended to allegorical scenes, where gesture and atmosphere carry psychological tension.

Sources: MoMA: Expressionism; MoMA: Die Brücke; MoMA: Der Blaue Reiter; MoMA: Kirchner's Street, Dresden; MoMA: Klee's Twittering Machine; The Met: Schiele's Seated Woman, Back View.