Dating from the early 1980's, this style reaffirmed the psychic emotionalism of the early twentieth-century Expressionism. It became perhaps the most distinctive direction in Postmodernism.

New” expressionism - a term originally applied to works done primarily by German and Italian, who came to maturity in the post-WWII era; and later expanded (in the 1980's) to include certain American artists. Neo- Expressionist works depict intense emotions and symbolism, sometimes using unconventional media and intense colors with turbulent compositions and subject matter.

A prefix meaning "new," here referring to a revival or renewed interest in German Expressionism and expressive art in general by American and European artists in the 1980s.

A revival in the late 1970s of the early twentieth-century German Expressionist movement.

Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Related to American Lyrical Abstraction it developed in Europe as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies.