German Expressionism, another modernity

For more than a century, the National Gallery has built its identity around European painting from the 13th to the 19th century. With German Expressionism: Modern Painting 1900-1918, on view from 20 March to 1 August 2027, the museum moves into territory that has long remained at the margins of its programme: modern art. The exhibition will be the first organised by the National Gallery devoted to an artistic movement after 1900 and the first exhibition in the United Kingdom and Ireland since the 1960s to place the two principal strands of German Expressionism - Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter - in direct dialogue. Emerging in the early 20th century between Dresden, Berlin and Munich, the two groups developed a form of painting that rejected naturalism and academic conventions through intense colours, distorted forms and a highly subjective approach. The exhibition will bring together more than fifty works from museums and international collections, many of them rarely shown in the United Kingdom. The project is organised in collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland, where the exhibition will travel in autumn 2027. According to the London museum, the exhibition aims to present “an alternative history of modernity”, distinct from the French-centred narrative that has dominated much of the history of modern European art. In this context, German Expressionism is presented as one of the defining moments in the redefinition of 20th-century painting, shaped by spiritual tensions, urbanisation, social anxiety and visual experimentation. The exhibition also reflects a broader transformation taking place within the National Gallery. In recent years the museum has gradually extended its chronological range beyond its traditional 1900 limit, opening an implicit dialogue with the role historically occupied by Tate Modern in the British landscape of modern and contemporary art. Artists associated with the two groups include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde and Gabriele Münter. Rather than a unified movement, German Expressionism was a constellation of different experiences, interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and later targeted by Nazi campaigns against so-called “degenerate art”.