German art - 20th century, Modern art, contemporary artists

A term used loosely to cover art in C and E Europe, more narrowly for the region that became Germany in 1871. The tradition began under the Ottonian emperors, 10th–11th-c; great Romanesque basilicas followed at Mainz, Worms, and Speyer; Hildesheim was a centre for bronze sculpture, and manuscript illumination flourished at Reichenau. The Gothic style arrived from France in the 13th-c; 15th-c painting developed partly under Flemish influence; woodcut and line engraving was strong, culminating in the greatest German master, Dürer. The N was affected by the Reformation, but S Germany and Austria saw a flowering of Baroque architecture and decoration in the late 17th-c. Late 18th-c and early 19th-c Germany fully exploited Neoclassicism and Romanticism, as in the landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). Major 20th-c contributions included Expressionism and the Bauhaus.

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

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.

The German Renaissance was a result of German artists who had travelled to Italy to learn more and become inspired by the Renaissance movement. Albrecht Dürer was a well known German artist of this period. 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. 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 years 1815 (Vienna Congress), the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848.

20th century

Plakatstil, was an early poster style of art that began in the early 1900s and originated out of Germany. 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). 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)

Die Brücke was one of two groups of German painters fundamental to Expressionism, the other being Der Blaue Reiter group ("The Blue Rider") formed in Munich in 1911.

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.

Art in the third reich

Degenerate art (from the German: entartete Kunst) was the official platform adopted by the Nazi regime for banning modern art in favor of Heroic Art. According to Nazi thinking, Heroic Art symbolized racially pure art, free from distortion and corruption, while modern styles 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. 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.

Modern art

The art group Gruppe SPUR was comprised 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.

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

contemporary artists

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