The sudden death of Moreau in 1897 devastated Rouault. Around the same time, his parents moved to Algeria to support his sister whose husband had passed away. Despite being entrusted and appointed Curator of the Moreau Museum in 1898, Rouault fell into a deep depression. He endured a violent crisis and a long period of solitude and sorrow that he called his "abyss". He stopped painting for a while. "It was then," he commented later, "that I learned the truth of Cezanne's famous words, 'Life is horrifying'". a b Hind, Arthur M. (1963). An Introduction to a History of Woodcut. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963. pp.64–94. ISBN 978-0-486-20952-4.

Portrait of Otto Müller (1983,0416.3)". British Museum Collection Database. London: British Museum . Retrieved 5 June 2010. Rouault holds a special place in the history of modern art. He was contemporary of the Cubists, Fauvists and Expressionists without ever joining their ranks. He developed a highly individualistic style but because he was a passionate Catholic, and often depicted religious themes, he was never fully accepted as a modernist artist. Clement Greenberg had dismissed him by saying in 1945: "That Rouault, pictorial exponent of the pornographic, sadomasochistic, 'avant-garde' Catholicism of Léon Bloy, should be hailed as the one profoundly religious painter of our time is one of the embarrassments of modernist art". He was mistrusted both by modernists, who found him too conventional, and by religious writers who found his religious sensibilities not traditional enough. The prime example is Robert Wiene's dream-like film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) which is universally recognized as an early classic of Expressionist cinema. Hermann Warm, the film's art director, worked with painters and stage designers Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig to create fantastic, nightmarish sets with twisted structures and landscapes with sharp-pointed forms and oblique, curving lines. Some of these designs were constructions, others were painted directly onto canvases.

Works from the Collection

Graham De La Rosa, Michael; Gilbert, Samuel (25 March 2017). "Oaxaca's revolutionary street art". Al Jazeera . Retrieved 23 March 2019. Like all women artists of her era, Gabriele Münter struggled for recognition during her lifetime, and saw her contributions to German Expressionism overshadowed by her male counterparts. “In the eyes of many, I was only an unnecessary side-dish to Kandinsky,” she once wrote. “It is all too easily forgotten that a woman can be a creative artist with a real, original talent of her own.” (This past year, at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Münter’s work was explored in her first comprehensive retrospective in decades.) German Expressionism art became so much more than simply creating art that told a story, as works incorporated political, social, and cultural aspects. The relationship between art and society was explored, with works being understood as vessels of change that depicted the transitional nature of German culture in the midst of chaos. In its entirety, German Expressionism was indeed fleeting, and its extreme anti-realism began to dwindle after a few years as artists and writers aged.

Don Kornits (2 June 1999). "Alex Proyas – Director, Dark City". eFilmCritic . Retrieved 6 July 2007. Ives, C F (1974). The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-87099-098-4. Art within this time was thought of as something that held traditional aesthetic value and tended to shy away from including any radical political influences. Through the development of German Expressionism, traditional German art became something that held a deeper meaning and spoke directly to the political and social issues that were plaguing Germany. so Landau and Parshall, 179–192; but Bartrum, 179 and Renaissance Impressions: Chiaroscuro Woodcuts from the Collections of Georg Baselitz and the Albertina, Vienna, Royal Academy, London, March–June 2014, exhibition guide, both credit Cranach with the innovation in 1507. Prior to the development of German Expressionism, traditional German art was influenced by a number of earlier movements. Before the Expression movement began, German artists experimented with styles and techniques found within Romanticism and Naturalism, which led artists to typically depict scenes of nature and the wealthy aristocratic society in their paintings.Despite German Expressionism being the one of most distinguished art movements to come out of Germany, a variety of other German art movements existed in addition to it. However, between the start of the 20 th century and 1945, Germany experienced two world wars and underwent plenty of technological and cultural changes. Despite its downfall, the importance of German Expressionism art was that it encouraged various European cultures of the 1920s to embrace the concept of change and to boldly experiment with unfamiliar artistic styles and ideas. Films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari drew upon themes of reality, such as a soldier’s experience in World War I and the reality of a new social and political structure. A wariness of authoritarian leadership underpinned the themes of horror and dramatic distortions of sets, costumes, and props. Lighting was a critical element in capturing Expressionism on film—shadows and angular portrayals mirrored the statements made by brushstrokes and color in German Expressionist paintings. To this day, filmmakers such as Tim Burton and M. Night Shyamalan have drawn inspiration from the dramatic renderings of German Expressionism in film. Notable Expressionist Artists a b c d Azuela, Alicia (1993). "El Machete and Frente a Frente: Art Committed to Social Justice in Mexico". Art Journal. 52 (1): 82–87. doi: 10.2307/777306. ISSN 0004-3249. JSTOR 777306.

As was the norm amongst modernists who wanted to represent the lives of "ordinary" workers, Rouault's prostitute paintings treated his sitters with a genuine, non-judgemental, empathy. Rouault represented his workers with an honest, unadorned, realism that allowed for (or, in his view, insisted upon) an emphasis on naked sensuality. He was thus able to eclipse the aims of his peers by the way he drew attention to the contradictions at play between his models' Rubenesque seductiveness and their societal exploitation.Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history. Self-Portrait with Hand on Forehead, etching by Käthe Kollwitz, 1910; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (more)