Expressionism in the Netherlands

Some fteen years after Vincent van Gogh’s death (1853-1890), a new generation of artists found inspiration in the expressive brushstrokes, vivid color contrasts, and emotional charge in his paintings. Initially, it was not his compatriots who most strongly experienced the stylistic impact of his work, but rather French fauves and German expressionists, who made a radical break with the nineteenth-century tradition of faithfully rendering reality. This formed the beginning of an entirely new approach to art which Dutch artists then in turn applied to their own work. Thus, Van Gogh’s pictorial inuence on his own countrymen tended to manifest itself via largely circuitous routes.