[Ar.Priyanka Mathur]

EXPRESSIONISM CHARACTERISTICS

Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways express aesthetic rules, but it is still useful to develop some criteria which defines it.

• Distortion of form for an emotional effect.

• Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner experience.

• An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary.

• abundance of works on paper, and models, with discovery and representations of concepts more important than pragmatic finished products.

• Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept.
Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains, lightning, crystal and rock formations. As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close contemporary Art

•Utilizes creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.

•Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical.

[Ar.Niyati Gupta]

Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is as eastern as western. It draws as much from Moorish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art and architecture as from Roman or Greek.

Conception of architecture as a work of art.

The major permanent extant landmark of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam.

[Ar.Priyanka Mathur]

Twa Building in New York by Eero Saarinen 1956-62