Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism Opens

Neue Galerie New York opened "Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism, 1905-1913," a museum exhibition devoted to the Dresden- and Berlin-based group whose artists helped define German Expressionism. The exhibition brought together more than 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper and was organized by Reinhold Heller, a scholar of German Expressionism and member of the museum's board. Its importance lay partly in geography: it was documented as the first major United States exhibition to focus on the Brücke artists as a group, and Neue Galerie was the sole venue. By concentrating Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Pechstein, and their circle in an American museum context, the show reframed the movement as a foundational modernist formation rather than a secondary strand of European avant-garde history.

The exhibition helped consolidate Brücke's visibility for American audiences as a central origin point of Expressionism.