Die Brücke

Die Brücke (The Bridge) was an artistic community of young Expressionist artists in Dresden. Their aim was to overthrow the conservative traditions of German art. Their 'bridge' was a path to a new and better future for German art.The meaning of the name suggested they would build Die Brücke (the bridge) from the great German artistic past of Dürer and Grunewald over the contemporary artistic bourgeoisie to a new and better future. 

Die Brucke made use of a technique that was controlled, intentionally unsophisticated and crude, developing a style hallmarked by expressive distortions and emphases. Die Brucke artists often used color similar to the Fauves, and they were also influenced by art form from Africa and Oceania.
  Some of the painters in the group sympathized with the revolutionary socialism of the day and drew inspiration from Van Gogh's ideas on artists' communities. Die Brucke expressionists believed that their social criticism of the ugliness of modern life could lead to a new and better future. 

The main artistic form that emerged from this fusion of styles was the woodcut. The woodcut had been a traditional German print medium for narrative illustration. When fused with the vocabulary of 'primitive' art, the medium became a powerful tool for personal expression. A modern alterative to this traditional technique was the linocut, a medium invented by Die Brücke.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was one of the founding members of the Die Brucke organized in a former butchershop in Dresden in 1905. It was he who named the group after a quote by Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end..."

 Many consider Schmidt-Rottluff to be the most independent of Die Brucke. He was inspired by the expressive power of the art he saw at the Ethnographic Museum in Dresden. Schmidt-Rottluff excelled in the long German tradition of the woodcut.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Madchen aus Kowno (Girl from Kowno)

References:

http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/expressionism.htm

http://www.germanexpressionism.com/printgallery/schmidt-rottluff/index.html