Neo- Expressionism

1970-1990 - Style of modern painting in which the artist handles the materials in a rough and raw way, typically expressing violent emotion. Its a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Related to American Lyrical Abstraction it developed in Europe as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. Overtly inspired by the so-called German Expressionist painters--Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz--and other emotive artist such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch. The popularity of the style, or partially even the style itself, was created by aggressive marketing and media promotion by the art dealers and galleries. Artists incude Julian Schnabel David Salle Francesco Clemente Sandro Chia Anselm Kiefer Georg Baselitz