Byzantine influence came as a wave into Europe in the 1200s, especially Barcelona and Catalonia as part of Aragon, open to Mediterranean trading.
Below is just a small sampling of Gothic Catalan art in the MNAC, religious altars, painted or carved wood. Depictions of saints and martyrs and terrifying tortures. Still unique local creativity, see the anonymous Barcelona altar from the late 1200's that looks like 19th century art nouveau. Great increase in complexity and technique along with foreign influences, especially from Italy from the fourteenth century on.
Altar of saint Miquel, 1432-3
A bright and somewhat misty day. There are lots of construction cranes.
Going south, the mountains emerged in the distance.
The Zurich Kunsthaus has a new modern addition called the Chipperfield Building. It houses two collections on loan, the Merzbacher collection and pieces from the Bührle Foundation. While Werner and Gabriele Merzbacher were able to survive the war in Switzerland, their families were not so lucky and many died in German camps. The Merzbachers created a collection mainly of "French Fauvism and German Expressionism that celebrates the vibrancy and expressive power of color." There seems to be no questions about provenance and the Merzbachers state that they are grateful and want to give back to Switzerland.
https://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/sammlung/private-sammlungen/merzbacher/
Andre Derain, Boats in the Port of Collioure, 1905.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In the Greenery (Woman Seated in a Garden), 1890-91.
On the other hand, Emil Bührle was a German who obtained Swiss citizenship and ran a munitions company near Zurich. The arms company supplied Germany and other Axis powers during the war, employed thousands of people, made up almost a fifth of Swiss total exports, and made Bührle the wealthiest man in the country. He amassed art and became one of the biggest benefactors of the Zurich Kunsthaus. There are issues of provenance. Also, questions about the documented use of forced labor in his factories. One senses that the whole story is not told by the museum, and that they cannot afford to tell the whole story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Georg_B%C3%BChrle
Die Brücke started in Dresden around 1905 as a German expressionist group that, like the French Fauves, expressed emotions through intense colors, crude brushwork and interests in primitivist art. The founders were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Beyl, later joined by Emil Nolde and others. I see a link with the Fauves and cannot distinguish from other highly colored German Expressionists, like Der Blaue Reiter, see below.
The Zurich Kunsthaus sign says: "The Brücke artists strove to reproduce directly and authentically what they had seen and experienced. Their works are characterized by generally crude and spontaneous application of pure, vivid colors, couples with jagged forms. Crucially, the development of their expressionist style was shaped by close study of objects from non-European cultures that were displayed in ethnology museums: in them, they identified an archaic, unspoiled, pre-civilization quality that they set out to affirm in their quest for the primitive and a life spent in harmony with nature. The fact that these collections largely consisted of items plundered from colonies was not an issue for society at the time."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Br%C3%BCcke
The Blue Rider group formed in Munich around 1911-12 and was associated with Wassily Kandinsky and his partner Gabriele Munter, Marianne von Werefkin and her partner Alexej von Jawlensky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee. Although this was a different group than 'Die Brucke,' I cannot distinguish them and they all look like German Expressionists influenced by the French Fauves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Blaue_Reiter
Paul Klee, Moonrise-Sunset, 1919.
Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) is represented in both the Merzbacher and the Bührle of the Zurich art museum collections with vibrant and compelling images; he holds his own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_de_Vlaminck
Oranges, 1907-8.
