Neo-Expressionism
新表現主義 / 1978–1990 / Style / Gestural Abstraction
An international current in which large formats, violent brushwork and subjects from history and myth returned, in reaction against the asceticism of Minimal and Conceptual art. Its raw draughtsmanship and layers of grime feed directly into the temperature of 1980s record sleeves and magazine layouts.
Large formats and coarse brushwork / Subjects from myth and history / Heavy use of muddied colour and black / Mixed-in materials and physical thickness
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Record sleeves and gig posters that need heat, mess and myth · Fashion and editorial imagery trading polish for raw painterly attack
- Type
- Scrawled, hand-painted headlines; letterforms attacked rather than set
- Composition
- Oversized central figures crowding the frame; layers colliding without hierarchy
- Material
- Muddied colour, black, and matter mixed into the paint—straw, sand, collage
- Caution
- Avoid controlled, tasteful roughness—the style demands real excess, and a tidied version reads as a costume of rebellion.
- Further study
- The differences between the German, Italian and American strands / The relationship with the art market / The spread into 1980s graphics