neo-expressionism

Intense 1980s painting style

Neo-expressionism is an art movement emerging in the late 1970s and 1980s that revived the emotional intensity and bold brushwork of earlier expressionism.

After decades of minimalism and conceptual art, painters like Basquiat, Schnabel, and Kiefer returned to figurative imagery, raw gestures, and vivid color.

The work often appears deliberately crude or aggressive: His neo-expressionist canvases sold for millions at auction.

technique

impasto

Heavily applied pigment technique

vivid color · mixed media · collage · found objects · dripping · scrawling · layering · textural · spontaneous · crude

movement

Basquiat

Late street-art painter

postmodernism · Boone · art market · gestural · raw · intense · emotional · subjective

aesthetic

figurative

Representing through imagery

provocative · confrontational · primal · emotional · violent · chaotic · colorful · monumental · visceral · raw

themes

identity

Who someone is

death · sexuality · race · history · violence · consumer culture · power · angst · alienation · humanity

Opposites
artistic approach and aesthetic

neo-expressionismminimalism

Aesthetic of reduction

conceptual art · conceptualism · hard-edge painting · post-minimalism · op art

historical/chronological positioning

neo-expressionismconceptualism

Universals as mental constructs

land art · performance art · video art · intermedia · readymades

Family

express, expression, expressive, neo-Darwinism, neologism, expressiveness, neoclassical, neolithic, expressionism

Familiarity
Top 1,000,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G