120 years of artist group bridge: Dresden's creative history celebrated!

120 years of artist group bridge: Dresden's creative history celebrated!

Friedrichstadt, Deutschland - In 2025, the famous Bridge artist group celebrates an important milestone in art history with its 120th anniversary. Founded on June 7, 1905 in Dresden by four architecture students-Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff-it is considered the germ cell of German Expressionism and turned the aesthetic and moral norms of their time upside down. Dresden Magazine reports that the artists strived to return to nature and an outbreak from the bourgeois narrow. Your works, shaped by bright colors, impulsive brush strokes and dynamic lines, reflect the urge to capture life in motion and at the moment.

The Dresden studios of the Brücke artists became a central place of their creative development and messenger space for intensive work. During the legendary summer from 1909 to 1911, the artists tented bathing and enjoying nature to the picturesque Moritzburg ponds, where they painted. But the success story had already reached its climax in 1911 when the group moved to Berlin and finally dissolved in 1913. Her legacy still lives on, and the Brücke-Weg in Moritzburg leads to 15 original creatures that can be explored on foot or by bike today.

art summer Moritzburg 2023

The Moritzburg Art Summer 2023 brings the legend of the bridge back into the spotlight. Numerous exhibitions and workshops in the Red House at Dippelsdorfer Teich celebrate the foundation of the group and its influence on the art landscape. In the Albertinum in Dresden, important works of the Brücke artists and other avant-garde artists can also be admired, including impressive work by Kirchner and Schmidt-Rottluff.

But what makes German Expressionism so special? This movement, which arose in Germany before the First World War and reached its peak in Berlin in 1920, brought a rebellion against traditional, bourgeois art. Learn to paint informs that German Expressionism not only included painting, but also influenced areas such as literature, music, architecture, dance and film.

the influence and the heir

The influence of the bridge on the European cultural scene of the 1920s cannot be overlooked. Central topics included the subjective feelings of the artists and the social disillusionment, which come alive in their work. The resistance to state -funded art education was another driving force for the artists of the bridge, who brought the courage to question the prevailing conventions.

The bridge and its artists shaped a new era in art history, which not only expanded the limits of painting, but also influenced numerous other forms of expression. Important artists such as Edvard Munch, Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky contributed to the development and spread of expressionism. Even though the bridge stopped in 1913, its legacy remained to this day and continues to inspire artists from all over the world.

In this way, the 120th anniversary of the Brücke artist group is not only regarded as a review of the past, but as a lively memory of how art can act as a protesting, moving element of society.