Art Movements: Expressionism, Constructivism, and Beyond

Expressionism

Expressionism encompasses a series of artists who display a similar mood in their treatment of the subject. It stresses the importance of the artist's impression on the material, showing the process and interpreting the human figure in a personal way. This appeals to universal concepts such as loneliness, anger, and mortality. Artists like Alberto Giacometti, during his early surrealist period, Marino Marini, who regularly used the man on horseback as a subject, and Georg Baselitz, who primarily works in wood, exemplify this movement.

Constructivism

Constructivism is a movement that approaches almost architectural solutions, creating a new category of art from models, ephemeral sculptures, and architecture. Assembly techniques are used throughout the century. Tatlin's Tower of the Third International is a model of this spirit of renewal and utopian vision.

New Modes of Expression Since the 1960s

Since the 1960s, sculpture has introduced new and heterogeneous modes of expression. Key aspects include:

• The Visual

  Photography and film merge into video. Video combines still and moving images with three-dimensional space.

• Installation and Environment Art

  These forms extend sculpture beyond its classical limits. Poetic discourse takes shape in real space, allowing the spectator to wander and share the space of the artwork.

• Play-Action Art

  The happening is a set of activities often included in discussions of sculpture. In a happening (an intermediate form between theater, installations, and environments), a series of planned actions occur, leaving behind only the waste of materials used. Performances emerge from happenings and actions.

• Pop Art

  Pop Art is a stark reflection of reality, addressing societal concerns without idealizing them. It adopts icons of mass culture, breaking the barrier between high and low culture.

• Land Art

  Land Art emerged in the 1960s. Artists sought to create art as an alternative to consumerism and modern lifestyles.

  Land art pieces cannot be purchased because they are made with natural materials of little value and degrade over time.

  Key aspects to understand:

  • Returning to nature as an artist and using action space as a place where man finds himself.
  • Restoring a positive meaning to degraded natural environments through human action.
  • Using materials found in the place itself: soil, stones, lightning, etc.

  Artists take an active stance against the art trade system. Their works are not consumer products and are not intended to be permanent.