Powerful gazes: faces of Expressionism

Like generations of artists before them, the Expressionists devoted themselves to depicting their own faces. The self-portraits exhibited here, with their varied forms of representation, impressively illustrate the departure from naturalistic reproduction. The focus is less on reality and more on the expressiveness of the faces and the lines that describe them.

Oskar Kokoschka’s sweeping lines convey a sense of inner turmoil, while Käthe Kollwitz’s portrait, with its dense hatching, creates a strangely oppressive atmosphere. The smoking Max Pechstein presents himself as self-confident, cool and dandyish, very much in keeping with the anti-academic young generation of artists who drew their inspiration primarily from subjective experience.