German Expressionism

NEW EXHIBITION ANNOUNCED FOR 2027

9 September 2027 - 9 January 2028
Rooms 6-10 | Tickets from €0-€16

This is the first exhibition in Ireland and the UK in 60 years to chart the work of both of the pivotal German Expressionist groups Die Brücke (Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), who were active from the start of the twentieth century until the end of the First World War. Made up of a new generation of radical, freethinking artists, these collectives experimented with form and brushwork to break new ground in twentieth-century painting.  

Working in parallel in different regions of Germany, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter sought to free painting from naturalistic constraints and express an intensity of individual experience and emotion on the canvas. Artists featured in this exhibition include Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. This exhibition celebrates the remarkable achievements of these artists in painting - the electrifying colours, energetic brushstrokes, and formal fragmentation that opened the doors to abstraction.  

German Expressionism gathers over 50 international loans, rarely seen in the UK and Ireland, to give a comprehensive introduction to this transformative moment in modern painting.

Curator: Sean Rainbird, former director of National Gallery of Ireland and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery, London in collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland.

This project is supported by the Irish and UK Governments under the UK-Ireland Cultural Co-operation Programme 2026-2030.