Image: Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock
‘The Age of Anxiety: German Expressionism in Art and Film’ will take a bold new look at the modern movement from October 9, 2026, through January 10, 2027.
The exhibition connects German Expressionist paintings and graphic works with imagery from influential 1920s films, including ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ (1920), ‘Nosferatu’ (1921) and ‘Metropolis’ (1927).
It places Expressionism against Germany’s political and economic turmoil following World War I, highlighting jagged lines, shadowy settings and unsettling beauty in the art that emerged from the chaos. The exhibition also presents 1920s films as taking the movement’s effort to reflect contemporary energies and tensions into new forms of horror and science-fiction cinema.
Among the works are Albert Bloch’s ‘Duell (Duel),’ a 1912 oil on canvas, and Martel Schwichtenberg’s ‘Frauenkopf (Head of a Woman),’ an oil painting from circa 1920.
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, a screening of the original 1922 version of F. W. Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’ highlights the film as a landmark of German Expressionist filmmaking and one of the earliest masterpieces of horror, while exploring responses to a rapidly changing world through psychological tension, distorted realities and haunting beauty.
