A Movement in History

Neo Expressionism came into existance in the late 1970s and continued on into the mid 1980s. It's style is commonly charatorized by rough, expressive lines with a violent nature, jarring color choices and most often the depiction of human figures. It came to be threw a rebellion against the Minimalist and Conceptual movements. Neo expressionist artist were not interested in the abstractions founded by the Minimalist and Conceptual movements and took a fair amount of influence from German expressionism, mythology, religion, war and even Picasso's later period of work. Neo expressionist artists came from a variety of places such as Germany, America, England and Italy. The movement was fairly male dominant. There were only a hand full of female artists who took to the style and none of which were included in the movements most celebrated collective known as Neue Wilden (the new wild ones) nor were there any female artists in the the landmark exhibition for neo expressionism "the New Spirit of Painting" which took place in England, with 38 artists taking part. A few artists made a name for themselves some of which were George Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alsem Kiefer who I will be focusing on.