20 Facts About German art

German art has a long and distinguished tradition in the visual arts, from the earliest known work of figurative art to its current output of contemporary art.

German art Renaissance developed in rather different directions to the Italian Renaissance, and was initially dominated by the central figure of Albrecht Durer and the early German art domination of printing.

The German provinces produced art in provincial versions of Roman styles, but centres there, as over the Rhine in France, were large-scale producers of fine Ancient Roman pottery, exported all over the Empire.

Carolingian German art was restricted to a relatively small number of objects produced for a circle around the court and a number of Imperial abbeys they sponsored, but had a huge influence on later Medieval German art across Europe.

Early Christian German art had not featured monumental sculptures of religious figures as opposed to rulers, as these were strongly associated by the Church Fathers with the cult idols of Ancient Roman religion.

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Under the next Ottonian dynasty, whose core territory approximated more closely to modern Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland, Ottonian art was mainly a product of the large monasteries, especially Reichenau which was the leading Western artistic centre in the second half of the 10th century.

Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, then based in Prague, played an important pGerman art in forming the International Gothic style in the late 14th century.

Martin Schongauer, who worked in Alsace in the last part of the 15th century, was the culmination of late Gothic German painting, with a sophisticated and harmonious style, but he increasingly spent his time producing engravings, for which national and international channels of distribution had developed, so that his prints were known in Italy and other countries.

Concept of the Northern Renaissance or German art Renaissance is somewhat confused by the continuation of the use of elaborate Gothic ornament until well into the 16th century, even in works that are undoubtedly Renaissance in their treatment of the human figure and other respects.

German art rapidly became famous all over Europe for his energetic and balanced woodcuts and engravings, while painting.

German art's son, Hans Holbein the Younger was an important painter of portraits and a few religious works, working mainly in England and Switzerland.

Baroque and Rococo periods saw German art producing mostly works derivative of developments elsewhere, though numbers of skilled artists in various genres were active.

Many German painters worked abroad, including Johann Liss who worked mainly in Venice, Joachim von Sandrart and Ludolf Bakhuisen, the leading marine artist of the final years of Dutch Golden Age painting.

In general German academies imposed a particular style less rigidly than was for long the case in Paris, London, Moscow or elsewhere.

Enlightenment period saw German writers becoming leading theorists and critics of art, led by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who exalted Ancient Greek art and, despite never visiting Greece or actually seeing many Ancient Greek statues, set out an analysis distinguishing between the main periods of Ancient Greek art, and relating them to wider historical movements.

Biedermeier German art appealed to the prosperous middle classes by detailed but polished realism, often celebrating domestic virtues, and came to dominate over French-leaning aristocratic tastes, as well as the yearnings of Romanticism.

German art dramaticised past and contemporary Prussian military successes both in paintings and brilliant wood engravings illustrating books, yet his domestic subjects are intimate and touching.

German art followed the development of early Impressionism to create a style that he used for depicting grand public occasions, among other subjects like his Studio Wall.

Major feature of German art in the early 20th century until 1933 was a boom in the production of works of art of a grotesque style.

German art's main contribution to theory was the expansion of the Gesamtkunstwerk to include the whole of society, as expressed by his famous expression "Everyone is an artist".