Knowra Neo-expressionism Neo-expressionism Neo-expressionism is a late-20th-century art movement that revived gestural painting and figurative imagery, reacting against conceptual and minimalist art.
Conceptual art : Art in which ideas or concepts take precedence over traditional visual or material form. Neo-expressionist painters rejected its emphasis on ideas over expressive, physical image-making.
Georg Baselitz : A German painter known for expressive figures, rough handling, and paintings made with subjects upside down. His forceful, inverted figures became a defining image of German neo-expressionism.
Expressionism : An art movement that distorts or intensifies form to convey subjective feeling and experience. Neo-expressionism reactivated expressionism’s priority of emotional force over naturalistic representation.
1980s art market : The commercial system of galleries, collectors, auctions, and institutions that expanded around contemporary art in the 1980s. Demand for large, visually assertive paintings helped turn neo-expressionism into a major market phenomenon.
The Painter (1980) : A Julian Schnabel painting from 1980, built from oil, gesso, and broken ceramic plates on wood. Its shattered-plate surface became a conspicuous example of neo-expressionist material excess.
Minimalism : An art movement that reduced form to basic geometric shapes, restrained materials, and sparse composition. Its impersonal restraint became a foil for neo-expressionism’s dense, gestural imagery.
Anselm Kiefer : A German artist whose paintings and installations address history, mythology, and the legacy of the Holocaust. His monumental, materially dense works made German history central to the movement’s imagery.
Figurative art : Art that depicts recognizable people, animals, or objects, whether realistically or in altered forms. The return to recognizable bodies and objects distinguished much neo-expressionist painting from abstraction.
Sotheby's : An international auction house founded in London in 1744. High-profile sales helped convert neo-expressionist painters’ visibility into record-setting art-market attention.
The Order of the Angels (1984) : An Anselm Kiefer painting from 1984 that uses lead, oil, and other materials to address myth and history. Its monumental surface shows how Kiefer joined expressive matter to German historical memory.
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