People interested in art, both collectors and members of the public who drop in at solo exhibitions or group shows must at times get quite confused by the different styles by which they are classified by critics, gallery owners and authors of books on art.

If one was to ignore the truly vast treasure chest of the realist, representational past and concentrate on what has conveniently been lumped together as 'modern art', there is still quite an array of titles which describe singular styles. At times, the differences between two approaches and methods are marginal and discernible only to the critic.

At other times, as in the case of Cubism, where images are deliberately fractured with a purpose, there has been a radical departure and the differences are quite huge.

In a sense Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque living in France offered in the years between 1908 and 1914 a radically new way of looking at the world; for they altered forever the Renaissance conception of panting as a window into the world where three-dimensional space is projected onto the flat picture plane by way of illusionistic drawing and one-point perspective.

The Cubists concluded that reality has many definitions, and that therefore objects in space—and indeed, space itself—have no fixed or absolute form.

Anybody interested in exploring the vast variety of techniques employed in 'modern art,' and in making a serious study of the subject might like to familiarise himself with Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. The list is not exhaustive and has not been presented in strict chronological order, but that is not really important.In this article this reviewer will present a movement which flourished in Germany in the early years of the 20th century, reaching its peak of popularity in the Berlin of the 1920s.

Referred to as Expressionism, it was an avant-garde cultural movement initially in poetry and painting which later spread to literature, dance, theatre, music, architecture and film. The Expressionist conveyed, through a wide range of styles and subject matter, or in the case of abstract art no subject at all, the subjective emotions and innermost feelings of the artist—what Vasily Kandinsky referred to as 'inner necessity'. Its typical trait was to present the world under an utterly subjective perspective, violently distorting it to evoke an emotional effect and vividly transmitting personal ideas.

The emphasis was on emotional experience rather than on physical reality. Just as the Post-Impressionists built on the foundation of Impressionism, the Expressionists built on the discoveries made by the Post-Impressionists and turned inward to the world of the spirit. However, an artistic movement that succeeds and follows another artistic movement is not necessarily an improvement or an advance in rectitude. On the contrary, it can represent a regression.

Employing many languages to give visible form to their feelings, they relied in the main on simple, powerful forms. The Expressionists were often crude, but their basic objective was to heighten the emotional response of the viewer. A discerning reader might point out that according to the criteria described above El Greco should be described as an Expressionist painter. True, but in practice, the term is applied mainly to 20th century works.

Some of the important forerunners of the Expressionist movement were, of course, Vincent Willem van Gogh, Munch, Klint and Klinger. However, the period of German Expressionism started in 1905 when the new artists' alliance known as The Bridge (Die Bruecke) was established. The younger German Expressionists drew inspiration from their own native traditions, folk art and the art of other cultures like Oceania and Africa.

Two of the more remarkable Expressionists whose paintings are being reproduced on this page and were somewhat different from their normal style, were Emil Nolde who was born in 1867 and lived a ripe old age, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

In the forefront of the movement were artists Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Bieyl. While they came up with a variety of subjects, expressing inner meaning through outer form, this reviewer never really cared for their work. At times it was crude, childlike and depressing without any redeeming feature whatsoever. The better work by Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rotiluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Mueller was morbid and gloomy to say the least. Readers should, however, judge for themselves whether the movement expressed progress or regress.