German art

German art describes the history of the visual arts in Germany.

The Bamberg Horseman is a stone equestrian statue by an anonymous medieval sculptor from the cathedral of Bamberg.

The Danube School (German:Donauschule or Donaustil) is the name of a circle of painters of the first third of the 16th century in Bayern and Austria. Artists of this school include Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber.

Hans Holbein the Elder and his brother Sigismund Holbein painted religious works in the late Gothic style. Hans the Elder was a pioneer and leader in the transformation of German art from the Gothic to the Renaissance style. His son, Hans Holbein the Younger was an important painter of portraits and religious works in the Northern Renaissance style.

The German Renaissance came about as German artists travelled to Italy to learn more and became inspired by the artists of the Italian Renaissance. Albrecht Dürer, a well known German artist of this period, worked initially in the established Germanic and northern forms but was open to the influences of the Renaissance. After visiting Italy, Dürer was back in Nuremberg by mid-1507, remaining in Germany until 1520.

The Düsseldorf school was a group of artists who painted mostly landscapes, and who studied at, or were influenced by the Düsseldorf Academy. Founded in 1767, the academy's influence grew in the 1830s and 1840s with the popularity of the Nazarene movement. The name Nazarene was adopted by a group of early nineteenth century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art. The principal motivation of the Nazarenes was a reaction against Neoclassicism and the routine art education of the academy system. They hoped to return to art which embodied spiritual values, and sought inspiration in artists of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, rejecting what they saw as the superficial virtuosity of later art.

Biedermeier refers to work in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in the period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the revolutions of 1848.

20th century

Plakatstil, was an early poster style of art that began in the early 1900s and originated out of Germany. "Plakatstil" means "poster style" in German. The traits of this style of art are usually bold, straight font with very simple design.

Die Brücke ("The Bridge") was one of two groups of German painters fundamental to expressionism, the other being Der Blaue Reiter group. Die Brücke was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. The original four Jugendstil architecture students led by Hermann Obrist included:

* Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966)
* Erich Heckel (1883-1970)
* Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
* Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976)

Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") formed in Munich, Germany in 1911. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgement from an exhibition by Neue Künstlervereinigung—another artists' group of which Kandinsky had been a member. The name Der Blaue Reiter derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses, and from Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality—the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art). Kandinsky had also titled a painting Der Blaue Reiter (see illustration) in 1903.

The New Objectivity, or neue Sachlichkeit (new matter-of-factness), was an art movement which arose in Germany during the 1920s as an outgrowth of, and in opposition to, expressionism. It is thus post-expressionist. The term is applied to works of pictorial art, literature, music, and architecture. It describes the stripped-down, simplified building style of the Bauhaus and the Weissenhof Settlement, the urban planning and public housing projects of Bruno Taut and Ernst May, and the industrialization of the household typified by the Frankfurt kitchen.

Art in the Third Reich

The Nazi regime banned modern art, which they condemned as degenerate art (from the German: entartete Kunst). According to Nazi ideology, modern art deviated from the prescribed norm of classical beauty. While the 1920s to 1940s are considered the heyday of modern art movements, there were conflicting nationalistic movements that resented abstract art, and Germany was no exception. Avant-garde German artists were now branded both enemies of the state and a threat to the German nation. Many went into exile and lost both their reputations and credibility.

In July, 1937, the Nazis mounted a defamatory exhibition, "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art), in Munich; it subsequently travelled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. The show was intended as an official condemnation of modern art, and included over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of thirty two German museums. Expressionism, which had its origins in Germany, contained the largest proportion of paintings represented. Simultaneously, and with much pageantry, the Nazis presented the "Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung" (Great German art exhibition) at the palatial "Haus der deutschen Kunst" (House of German Art). This exhibition displayed the work of officially approved artists such as Arno Breker and Adolf Wissel. At the end of four months "Entartete Kunst" had attracted over two million visitors, nearly three and a half times the number that visited the nearby "Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung".

Modern art

PUR

The art group Gruppe SPUR was composed of the following artists:

* Lothar Fischer (1933 - 2004)
* Heimrad Prem (1934 - 1978)
* Hans-Peter Zimmer (1936 - 1992)
* Helmut Sturm (1932)

The SPUR-artists met first at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Germany.

Neue Wilde

see: Junge Wilde

Transmediale

Transmediale is an annual festival for art and digital culture, held in Berlin

contemporary artists

Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Jonathan Meese, Daniel Richter, Albert Oehlen, Markus Oehlen, Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Rosemarie Trockel, Thomas Ruff, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Anselm Kiefer, Neo Rauch, Tim Eitel, Günther Uecker, Markus Lüpertz