ABSTRACT
The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century in Europe is characterized by a plethora of artistic styles and movements, a rich confusion with no clear-cut tendency or direction. The naturalist-impressionist tendency found in life material which was worthy of description and comment; the symbolist-neoromantic attitude was one of flight from the world towards the creation of artificial paradises and rarefied beauty. More vital emotions, more dynamic powers of description were extolled, a creation from within, an intense subjectivity which had no reluctance in destroying the conventional picture of reality in order that the expression be more powerful: this is the new tendency. The concentration on a dream-reality, of course, looks forward to surrealism, but it also exemplifies a growing tendency of expressionism to admit, and extol, the mystical, quasi-religious yearnings of the human soul. The soul under stress, racked and burning in fearful incandescence – this preoccupation may be called expr.
