neo-expressionism

—neo-expressionist, n., adj.

/nee'oh ik spresh"euh niz'euhm/, n.

an art movement, chiefly in painting, that developed in Germany, Italy, and the U.S. in the late 1970s, emphasized large heavy forms and thick impasto, and typically dealt with historical narrative in terms of symbolism, allegory, and myth.

Also, Neo-Expressionism. Also called new expressionism.

[1960-65]

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Art movement, chiefly of painters, that dominated the European and American art market in the early to mid-1980s.

It was controversial both in the quality of its production and in the highly commercialized aspects of its presentation. Its practitioners, including Julian Schnabel and Anselm Kiefer, reacted to the highly intellectualized abstract art of the 1970s by creating dramatic, gestural paintings that incorporated some figurative elements and recognizable symbols. Their art was characterized by a tense yet playful presentation of objects in a "primitivist" manner, vivid colour harmonies, large scale, and a sense of inner tension and alienation. See also Expressionism.

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▪ art movement

      diverse art movement (chiefly of painters) that dominated the art market in Europe and the United States during the early and mid-1980s. Neo-Expressionism comprised a varied assemblage of young artists who had returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects, in reaction to the remote, introverted, highly intellectualized abstract art production of the 1970s. The movement was linked to and in part generated by new and aggressive methods of salesmanship, media promotion, and marketing on the part of dealers and galleries.

      Neo-Expressionist paintings themselves, though diverse in appearance, presented certain common traits. Among these were: a rejection of traditional standards of composition and design; an ambivalent and often brittle emotional tone that reflected contemporary urban life and values; a general lack of concern for pictorial idealization; the use of vivid but jarringly banal colour harmonies; and a simultaneously tense and playful presentation of objects in a primitivist manner that communicates a sense of inner disturbance, tension, alienation, and ambiguity (hence the term Neo-Expressionist to describe this approach). Among the principal artists of the movement were the Americans Julian Schnabel and David Salle, the Italians Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente, and the Germans Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. Neo-Expressionism was controversial both in the quality of its art products and in the highly commercialized aspects of its presentation to the art-buying public.

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