ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on the so-called Poznań expressionism—a unique manifestation of the expressionist artistic style that existed in parallel to the second generation of German expressionism, during the interwar period. 1 The term “expressionism” was first used in a Polish context in 1911 in a review of the twenty-second exhibition of the Berliner Secession (Berlin Secession) published in Przegląd Wielkopolski (Great Poland Review) 2 and then popularized in the writings of the Paris-based Polish-Jewish art critic Adolf Basler, who enthusiastically proclaimed the birth of a new style “as universal as the Gothic and similarly like the Gothic born in France.” 3 His use of the term encompassed all tendencies toward a “new art,” and thus also cubism and futurism.
