Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early- postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called '' Transavantgarde'', ''

Junge Wilde The term Junge Wilde (German for "young wild ones") was originally applied to trends within the art world, and was only later used with reference to politics. At present, the term is used by German-language journalists to describe any group within ...

'' or ''Neue Wilden'' ('The new wild ones'; 'New Fauves' would better meet the meaning of the term). It is characterized by intense subjectivity and rough handling of materials. Neo-expressionism developed as a reaction against

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

and

minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in an abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way, often using vivid colors. It was overtly inspired by

German Expressionist German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...

painters, such as

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of th ...

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s ...

, George Grosz,

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century ...

James Ensor James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic g ...

and Edvard Munch. It is also related to American

Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting: ''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...

painting of the 1960s and 1970s,

The Hairy Who The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, Surrealism and complete i ...

movement in Chicago, the

Bay Area Figurative School The Bay Area Figurative Movement (also known as the Bay Area Figurative School, Bay Area Figurative Art, Bay Area Figuration, and similar variations) was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area wh ...

of the 1950s and 1960s, the continuation of Abstract Expressionism, precedents in Pop Painting, and New Image Painting: a vague late 1970s term applied to painters who employed a strident figurative style with cartoon-like imagery and abrasive handling owing something to Neo-Expressionism. The New Image Painting term was given currency by a 1978 exhibition entitled ''New Image Painting'' held at the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

Critical reception

Neo-expressionism dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. The style emerged internationally and was viewed by many critics, such as

Achille Bonito Oliva Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contempo ...

and

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Educatio ...

, as a revival of traditional themes of self-expression in European art after decades of American dominance. The social and economic value of the movement was hotly debated. From the point of view of the history of Modern Art, art critic Robert Hughes dismissed Neo-Expressionist painting as retrograde, as a failure of radical imagination, and as a lamentable capitulation to the

art market The art market is the marketplace of buyers and sellers trading in commodities, services, and works of art. The art market operates in an economic model that considers more than supply and demand: it is a hybrid type of prediction market where ...

. Critics such as

Benjamin Buchloh Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh (born November 15, 1941) is a German art historian. Between 2005 and 2021 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. Education and c ...

Hal Foster Harold Rudolf Foster, FRSA (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982) was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip '' Prince Valiant''. His drawing style is noted for its high level of draftsmanship ...

Craig Owens Craigery "Craig" Owens (born August 26, 1984) is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist of Chiodos. He has also had an involvement in various projects such as Cinematic Sunrise, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Isles & Glaciers, ...

, and

Mira Schor Mira Schor (born June 1, 1950) is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her contributions to critical discourse on the status of painting in contemporary art and culture as well as to feminist art history and criticism. Earl ...

were highly critical of its relation to the marketability of painting on the rapidly expanding art market, celebrity, the backlash against feminism,

anti-intellectualism Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically ...

, and a return to mythic subjects and individualist methods they deemed outmoded. Women were notoriously marginalized in the movement, and painters such as Elizabeth Murray and

Maria Lassnig Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness".Attias, Lauri''Maria Lassnig'', ''Frieze'', May 1996. She was the first female artist to win the Gran ...

were omitted from many of its key exhibitions, most notoriously the 1981 ''New Spirit in Painting'' exhibition in London which included 38 male painters but no female painters.

Neo-expressionist artists around the world

Australia

Davida Allen Davida Frances Allen (born 20 October 1951) is an Australian painter, filmmaker and writer. Early life and education Davida Allen was born on 20 October 1951 in Charleville, Queensland. She studied under Betty Churcher at the Stuartholme Schoo ...

* Peter Booth * Kevin Connor *

Brett Whiteley Brett Whiteley AO (7 April 1939 – 15 June 1992) was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. He held many exhibitio ...

Austria

Brazil

* Rodrigo Franzão

Cuba

* Adriano Nicot * Luis Marín

Denmark

* Anette Abrahamsson * Claus Carstensen *

Ursula Reuter Christiansen Ursula Reuter Christiansen (born 13 February 1943 in Trier, Germany) created work, whether it was painting or filmmaking, that showed examples of mythological symbolism. Biography Ursula Reuter Christiansen studied literature at the Philipp Univer ...

(born in Germany, active in Denmark) * Dorte Dahlin * Inge Ellegaard * Erik A. Frandsen *

Michael Kvium Michael Otto Albert Kvium (born 15 November 1955) is a Danish artist. He has excelled in a number of fields such as painting, illustrating, sculpting and various performance genres. Since the early 1980s, he has created grotesque realistic works, ...

* Christian Lemmerz * Kehnet Nielsen * Lars Nørgård * Lars Ravn * Nina Sten-Knudsen

France

Rémi Blanchard Figuration Libre ("Free Figuration") is a French art movement which began in the 1980s. It is the French equivalent of Bad Painting and Neo-expressionism in America and Europe, Junge Wilde in Germany and Transvanguardia in Italy. Artists in the mo ...

* Robert Combas * Jacques Grinberg * Hervé Di Rosa * René Marcil

Germany

* Georg Baselitz * Anselm Kiefer * Jörg Immendorff * Per Kirkeby (born Denmark, active Germany) * A.R. Penck *

Markus Lüpertz Markus Lüpertz (born 25 April 1941) is a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and writer. He also publishes a magazine, and plays jazz piano. He is one of the best-known German contemporary artists. His subjects are characterized by suggest ...

* Peter Robert Keil *

Rainer Fetting Rainer Fetting (born 31 December 1949 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany) is a German painter and sculptor. Rainer Fetting was one of the co-founders and main protagonists of the Galerie am Moritzplatz in Berlin, founded in the late 1970s by a group o ...

* Salomé *

Elvira Bach Elvira Bach (born 22 June 1951) is a postmodernist German painter known for her colourful images of women.Hahn, Werner (23 September 2011)"Gegenwarts-Kunst belanglos - NIEDERGANG/Misere: Werke von ELVIRA BACH (postmoderne „Junge Wilde“) im Ob ...

Peter Angermann Peter Angermann (born 1945 in Rehau, Bavaria) is a German painter based in Nuremberg. Education and career Initially, from 1966 to 1968, Peter Angermann, who was born in 1945 in Rehau, a small town in Upper Franconia in Bavaria, studied at the ...

Luciano Castelli Luciano Castelli (born 28 September 1951 in Lucerne) is a Swiss painter, graphic artist, photographer, sculptor and musician. Life and work Lucerne: model, self-promoter, Art Star Luciano Castelli visited the preliminary course of the School ...

(born in Switzerland, active Germany) *

Marwan Kassab-Bachi Marwan Kassab-Bachi (1934-2016) (Arabic: مروان قصاب باشي ), known as Marwan, was a German painter of Syrian origin. After being born in Damascus, Syria, he spent most of his life in Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and larg ...

(born in Syria, active Germany)

India

Bhupen Khakhar Bhupen Khakhar (also spelled Bhupen Khakkar, 10 March 1934 – 8 August 2003) was an Indian artist. He was a member of the Baroda Group and gained international recognition for his work as "India's first 'Pop' artist." Works Khakhar was a sel ...

Ebenezer Sunder Singh Ebenezer Sunder Singh (born 16 April 1967) is an Indian-American visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Singh works primarily as a painter, sculptor, photographer and filmmaker. Early life and education Singh was born in the temple town of T ...

Iraq

* Ahmed Al Safi

Italy

Francesco Clemente Francesco Clemente (born 23 March 1952) is an Italian contemporary artist. He has lived at various times in Italy, India and New York City. Some of his work is influenced by the traditional art and culture of India. He has worked in various art ...

Sandro Chia Sandro Chia (born 20 April 1946) is an Italian painter and sculptor. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was, with Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino, a principal member of the Italian Neo-Expressionist mov ...

* Enzo Cucchi *

Mimmo Paladino Mimmo Paladino (born Paduli, 18 December 1948) is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker. He is a leading name in the Transvanguardia artistic movement and one of the many European artists to revive Expressionism in the 1980s. Biography ...

Mexico

* Julio Galán

Poland

* Ludwik Konarzewski-junior *

Wilhelm Sasnal Wilhelm Sasnal (born December 29, 1972) is a Polish painter, photographer, poster artist, illustrator and filmmaker. Sasnal graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1999. He is considered one of the most prominent and int ...

South Africa

Marlene Dumas Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African artist and painter currently based in the Netherlands. Life and work Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Kuils River in the Western Cape, where her father had ...

Spain

Miquel Barceló Miquel Barceló Artigues (born 1957) is a Spanish painter. Career Barceló was born at Felanitx, Mallorca. After having studied at the Arts and Crafts School of Palma for two years, he enrolled at the Fine Arts School of Barcelona in 1 ...

* Peris Carbonell * Jorge Rando

Sweden

* Daniel Jouseff

Switzerland

Miriam Cahn Miriam Cahn (born July 21, 1949, in Basel) is a Swiss painter. Biography Cahn studied at Schule für Gestaltung Basel in Basle from 1968 to 1975. Work Cahn's paintings and drawings incorporate feminism themes and female rituals; featuring " ...

* Martin Disler *

Leiko Ikemura is a Japanese-Swiss painter and sculptor. Biography Leiko Ikemura studied at Osaka University from 1970–1972. She then left Japan to study in Spain from 1973 to 1978 at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Granada and Seville. In 1979, Ikemura ...

Ukraine

Vasiliy Ryabchenko Vasiliy Ryabchenko (born 23 July 1954, Odessa, USSR) is a Ukrainian painter, photographer, and installation artist. One of the key artists in contemporary Ukrainian art, and the " New Ukrainian Wave". Biography Vasiliy Ryabchenko was born on ...

United Kingdom

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

Frank Auerbach Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...

Peter Howson Peter Howson OBE (born 27 March 1958) is a Scottish painter. He was a British official war artist in 1993 during the Bosnian War. Early life Peter Howson was born in London of Scottish parents and moved with his family to Prestwick, A ...

* Leon Kossoff *

Christopher Le Brun Sir Christopher Mark Le Brun PPRA (born 1951) is a British artist, known primarily as a painter. He was President of the Royal Academy of Arts from the time of his election in 2011 to December 2019. Le Brun was knighted in the 2021 New Yea ...

United States

Ida Applebroog Ida Applebroog (born November 11, 1929) is an American multi-media artist who is best-known for her paintings and sculptures that explore the themes of gender, sexual identity, violence and politics. Applebroog has been the recipient of multiple ...

Donald Baechler Donald Baechler (November 22, 1956 – April 4, 2022) was an American painter and sculptor associated with 1980s Neo-expressionism. He had lived in Manhattan and Stephentown, New York. Early life and education Baechler was born in Hartford, ...

Jennifer Bartlett Jennifer Bartlett ( Losch; March 14, 1941 – July 25, 2022) was an American artist. She was known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Many of her ...

Leonard Baskin Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as well as founder of the Gehenna Press (1942–2000). One of America's first fine arts presses, it went on to become "one of the most imp ...

* Jean-Michel Basquiat * Richard Bosman * Christopher Brown * Louisa Chase * Chuck Connelly *

Norris Embry Norris Embry (January 14, 1921 – February 17, 1981) was an American artist associated with Neo-Expressionism, Outsider art, Art Brut and Outsider Art. Life Norris Embry was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He grew up in East Orange, New Jersey ou ...

Eric Fischl Eric Fischl (born March 9, 1948) is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, draughtsman and educator. He is known for his paintings depicting American suburbia from the 1970s and 1980s. Life Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on s ...

* Leon Golub *

Philip Guston Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...

* Michael Hafftka *

Marcus Jansen Marcus Antonius Jansen (born 1968) is an American painter. Early life and education Jansen was born and raised in New York City. He attended the Kunstgewerbe Schule Berufskolleg für Technik und Medien am Platz der Republik in Mönchengladba ...

Nabil Kanso Nabil Kanso (1940-2019) was an American painter. Kanso began his career in New York. His works dealt with contemporary, historical and literary themes, and were marked by figurative imagery executed with spontaneous and vigorous handling of the p ...

Kevin Larmee Kevin Larmee (born 1946)James Sheehan, "Larmee: in from the street," ''East Informer'', October 1985. is an American painter, best known for his association with the East Village art movement in New York City in the 1980s. Early life Larmee ...

* Danny Minnick *

Noel Rockmore Noel Rockmore (December 15, 1928 – February 19, 1995) was born Noel Montgomery Davis to his mother, Gladys Rockmore Davis, and his father, Floyd Davis, in New York City.Rockmore, Noel, The World of Noel Rockmore, Published by Greer Gallery, Ne ...

David Salle David Salle (born September 28, 1952; last name pronounced "Sally") is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He ear ...

Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been ...

* Ouattara Watts

Puerto Rico

Arnaldo Roche Rabell Arnaldo Roche Rabell (December 5, 1955 – November 17, 2018) was a Puerto Rican painter, described as "one of the most important artists of the neo-expressionist movement". Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was educated at the Luchetti School ...

References

External links

{{Authority control Contemporary art movements Expressionism Modern art Postmodern art 1970s in art