20th century European Art at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.
The geometry and dislocation of this naked male body come close to Cubism, while the vibrant colours recall Fauve painting.
This nude has been linked to the figure of Nijinsky, the Ballets Russes greatest star, who introduced major choreographic innovations and revolutionised the academic conventions of ballet. This dislocated figure might be regarded as an exact pictorial equivalent.
From the early 1910s onwards, Kandinsky turned his back on the depiction of the world of external appearances, embarking instead on the creation of wholly-abstract canvases, which led to his being hailed as the great pioneer of non-objective art. These works express his desire to create a pictorial equivalent of music, using a style capable of arousing emotions which - far removed from external realities - would become the expression of his inner strength. Here, the three large oval spots at the centre of the composition, surrounded by swirling shapes and bright colours, stress the religious symbolism of the number three and draw us into Kandinsky's personal universe of spiritual, mystical aspirations.
I have been to a lot of exhibitions where works by Kandinsky were featured. You can see some here
In the Bright Oval, which featured as number 313 on the painter's handwritten list, was painted in 1925. That year Kandinsky had finished the essay Point and Line to Plane developing his theories on the meaning of form and colour as autonomous elements within the composition.
Kandinsky discussed the psychological repercussions of colours and the relationship between form and colour with his students at the Bauhaus, and taught them how to associate the three primary colours - red, yellow and blue - with the three basic geometric shapes: the triangle, the square and the circle. However, In the Bright Oval should not be regarded as a composition that experiments with certain geometric elements since, like many earlier paintings, it has an underlying cosmic meaning.
Like most of Schiele's urban landscapes, the composition lacks perspective and is designed as a flat frieze that has sometimes been related to the stained glass windows and Gothic miniatures that fascinated him and his contemporaries, the German Expressionists. The image of a deserted, spooky town with no trace of human life gives the composition a melancholic air infused with a certain anxiety - the anxiety that Schiele captured so successfully in his portraits. Indeed, Kemberly A. Smith considered these landscapes to be metaphors of the human condition or 'melancholic elegies exhibiting a readily perceptible fascination with death'.
I became a bit obssessed.
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1896, (lithograph)
This painting is based on Munch's memories of his sister Sophie, who suffered from tuberculosis and died at the age of 15. He painted many versions of The Sick Child. He wanted to reproduce his impression of his dying sister - her pallid complexion and reddish hair against the white pillow. He tried to express something that was difficult to capture; the tired movement of the eyelids, the lips that seem to whisper, the little flicker of life that remains.
I saw quite a few of Munch's paintings in Stockholm - you can see some of them here
Franz Marc, The Dream, 1912, (oil on canvas)
No longer bound by the truthful representation of nature, yet without wholly relinquishing links to the real world, Marc highlights his awareness of Italian Futurist and French Cubist theories in this painting. The composition is structured around dynamic lines radiating outwards from the female figure in the foreground; naked and asleep, she becomes a symbol of the harmony between the human world and the animal realm. The varied creatures that surround her seem to be the product of her dream.
The scene takes place in the middle of the night, as indicated by the marked blackness of the background sky. The yellow house on the left may symbolise the real world, while the rest of the composition is occupied by the scene of the dream. The naked female figure in the centre, who sleeps seated with her legs crossed and surrounded by animals, is perhaps the symbol of harmony berween humans and the animal world.
Marc's theories rejected the rigid ways of life in the city, and were focused on the permanent pursuit of freedom of expression through a mystic vision of the natural world and the creation of new symbols appropriate to a new spirituality. He aspired to create a new paradisiacal realm in which humans could achieve perfect harmony with nature. In this new Arcadia symbols took the form of a profusion of animals converted into mystic creatures imbued with allegories, which the artist himself referred to as the 'animalisation of art'.
Marc joined The Blue Rider community of artists which you can read about here
Auguste Macke, Circus, 1913, (oil on cardboard)
Three acrobats attend to a female rider who has had an accident. Her inert body is carried from the ring, while the horse that has caused the tragedy is led away. Closer to the foreground, a figure bending over in the shadows turns his back on the viewer in a sign of grief. In this work the circus reveals its dual nature, in which merriment can instantly transform itself into profound sadness and in which danger and death constantly lie in wait.
Macke's focus on the expressive value of colour was combined with a fragmented concept of space derived from Delaunay in works that became the German successors to that French painter's chromatic Cubism.
You can see more of Macke's work on Expressionism here
Lyonel Feininger, The Lady in Mauve, 1922, (oil on canvas)
As in most of his compositions featuring human figures, Feininger adopts a very low viewpoint - a visual devide that enables him to enlarge the figure and extend the height of the buildings, which tower into the sky. He wrote: 'the slightest difference in relative proportions creates enormous differences with regard to the monumentality and intensity of the composition. Monumentality is not attained by making things larger - how childish! - but by contrasting large and small in the same composition'.
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau. Top of the Johannisstrasse, 1908, (oil on cardboard)
Following Kandinsky's and Gabriele Munter's travels all over Europe, Munter bought a house in Murnau in 1909. The colourful rendering of the Johannisstrasse displays the influence of the Fauve paintings that Kandinsky had seen in Paris. It shows a view of the beginning of the street, and, on the right in the background, the facade of the Griesbrau Inn, where the couple always stayed and which still stands today.
You can see more of Kandinsky's work on the above link which is here
Caspar David Friedrich, Easter Morning, 1928-35, (oil on canvas)
Friedrich is one of the leading exponents of Germasn Romantic painting. Throughout his life, he sought communion with nature as a means of expressing his feelings and ideas, his hopes and yearnings. Friedrich's landscapes are open to a profound religious interpretation. This one here, for instance, is imbued with a rich symbolism and everything has meaning: the moon and the dawn are symbolic of death and the hope of eternal life; the season chosen - late winter giving way to early spring - is linked to the Resurrection.
To see more of Friedrich's work go here
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