[2] His thesis was published the following year under the title Abstraction and Empathy: Essay in the Psychology of Style and remains his best-known work.
[2] During this period he got to know members of the Blue Rider group, and he worked with his sister Emmy Worringer to arrange lectures and exhibitions at the avant-garde artists' association known as the Gereonsklub.
[4] Following the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl, he argued that what he called "the urge to abstraction" arises not because of cultural incompetence at mimesis but out of a "psychological need to represent objects in a more spiritual manner".
"[6]: 36 Abstraction and Empathy was widely discussed and was especially influential among the German artists of Die Brücke; it also helped spur growing interest in the art of Africa and Southeast Asia.
[4] He is credited by philosopher Gilles Deleuze in A Thousand Plateaus as being the first person to see abstraction "as the very beginning of art or the first expression of an artistic will.
[4] Focused on Gothic art and architecture, it drew sharp distinctions between northern and southern European versions of the style.