Collection: Neo-Expressionism

Neo-Expressionism is the dominant figurative painting tendency of the late 1970s and 1980s, marking a deliberate return to large-scale figurative work, expressive gesture, and the materiality of paint after the dominance of Minimalism and Conceptual Art across the previous decade. The movement was explicitly inspired by the German Expressionists Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, James Ensor, and Edvard Munch.

The German wing, the Neue Wilden, included Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, A. R. Penck, Jörg Immendorff, and Sigmar Polke. The Italian Transavanguardia, named by the critic Achille Bonito Oliva in 1979, included Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, and Mimmo Paladino. The American line ran through Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Eric Fischl, Robert Longo, Philip Guston in his late period, and the graffiti-derived work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Each branch worked the broader return to the figure with distinct local concerns: German history and trauma, Italian classical references, American suburban and erotic subject matter. The movement effectively closed by the early 1990s, displaced by the rise of installation, photography, and video art.