The artists featured in this exhibition were associated with a movement that emerged in Germany and Austria during the first decade of the 20th century. The primary aim of the Expressionists was to convey intense emotions; they were less concerned with the accurate description of forms in nature. This goal accounts for the Expressionists' distortion of figures and space and their bold, even aggressive handing of the medium. Blunt forms, jagged edges, and roughly-drawn details make up their emotional vocabulary.
An important contribution of the German Expressionists' new, "cutting edge" movement was the revival of printmaking as a major form of art. Here their work literally is cutting edge, as the sharp tools of the print medium - the woodcut blade and etching needle - are emphasized. In the Expressionists' hands, the wood block seems to have been brutally chiseled; the copper plate vigorously attacked. The prints appear to have created through an excess of emotion.