Post-expressionism

Roh first used the term in an essay in 1925, "Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism", to contrast to Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub's "New Objectivity", which more narrowly characterized these developments within German art.

Expressionists, likewise abandoning imitation nature, sought to express emotional experience, but often centered their art around angst — inner turmoil; whether in reaction to the modern world, to alienation from society, or in the creation of personal identity.

In Italy, this was encouraged by the magazine Valori Plastici and came together in the Novecento, a group that exhibited in the Venice Biennale and was joined by many Futurists who had rejected their former work.

Mario Sironi, a member of this group, stated that they “would not imitate the world created by God but would be inspired by it.” The “New Objectivity” or Neue Sachlichkeit, as coined by Hartlaub, described the developments in Germany and became the title of an exhibition that he staged in 1925.

Neue Sachlichkeit was influenced not only by the “return to order” but also a call to arms among more left-leaning artists who wanted to use their art in a forward, political manner that expressionism didn't enable them to do.

When Hartlaub defined the idea of the Neue Sachlichkeit, he identified two groups: the verists, who “[tore] the objective form of the world of contemporary facts and represent current experience in its tempo and fevered temperature,” and the classicists, who “[searched] more for the object of timeless ability to embody the external laws of existence in the artistic sphere.” Although Roh originally meant the term 'Magic Realism' to be more or less synonymous with Neue Sachlichkeit, the artists identified by Hartlaub as 'classicists' later became associated with Roh's term.

These 'Magic Realists' were all influenced by the classicism developed in Italy by the Novecento, and in turn by de Chirico's concept of metaphysical art, which had also branched into surrealism.

Carrà described his purpose as to explore the imagined inner life of familiar objects when represented out of their explanatory contexts: their solidity, their separateness in the space allotted to them, the secret dialogue that may take place between them.

Like Donghi, he often painted traditional subjects, but rather than developing a strict classical style, used a more painterly brush to bring out the intimacy of the objects, similar to the Belgian animists.

Another artist in Italy considered a magic realist is Felice Casorati, whose paintings are rendered with fine technique but often distinguished by unusual perspective effects and bold colorfulness.

Other verist artists, like Christian Schad, depicted reality with a clinical precision, which suggested both an empirical detachment and intimate knowledge of the subject.

Expressionism was also exhibited in the Latemse School, where adherents like Constant Permeke and Hubert Malfait used brushwork in painting and loose form in sculpture to show a mystic reality behind nature.

In what had been called a “retour à l’humain” (return to the human), many artists working in Belgium after the war had kept the expressive brush of their forebears, but had rejected what they had seen as the anti-human, unreal distortions in their subject matter.

The goal was to use the expressive brush to depict the soul or spirit of the objects, people, and places they were painting, rather than a hyperbolic, externalized, displaced angst of the artist.

In his beach scenes, harsh waves are painted with a rough brush, clouds in patches — rougher when in storm — and the sand with a scraped quality.

Herman De Cuyper is also associated with animism, and abstracted to a more extreme degree than did Grard or LaPlae, and in some ways is more similar to Henry Moore.

[12] Cagli spoke of a spreading sensitivity and an Astro di Roma (Roman Star) which guided them, affirming it as the poetic basis of their art: In a primordial dawn all has to be reconsidered, and Imagination relives all wonders and trembles for all mysteries.Sometimes referred to as romantic expressionism, art from this group exhibits a wild painting style, expressive and disorderly, violent and with warm ochre and maroon tones.

Mario Mafai painted many scenes of Rome and its suburbs, and used warm chromatic colors to convey a sense of freshness and pictorial curiosity.