ABSTRACT
In Germany the modern, expressionist painters formed two schools, firstly Die Briicke in Dresden in 1905, and then Der blaue Reiter in Munich in 1912, including such famous names as Franz Marc, August Macke and, above all, Kandinsky. An expressionist canvas makes an almost physical attack on the observer, and it was Van Gogh with his violent brushwork and unrealistic colours who was one of the first to concentrate on the expression of disturbing and emotional experiences, conveying, in L’Arlésienne, with red and yellow the frightening passions of man. As Kandinsky created pure compositions of colour and line, so many expressionist poets created pure composition of autonomous metaphors which stand as abstracted and powerful nuclei of feeling. The metaphor becomes expressive rather than imitative, existing as a powerful, autonomous figure of speech from which radiate a host of evocative meanings.
