The "direct" communication of emotion through artistic means, like roughly carved woodcuts; vigorous brushstrokes; intense, often non-local color; and subjects that were drawn from counter-cultural bohemian life, and the city. Freed color from naturalism and symbolism. "In 1913, trying desperately to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world, I sought refuge in the form of the square." "The departure of art from the objective world and the discovery of new subject matter based only on the artist's inner need". Their de-skilled form of primitivism inspired a critic to describe them as "wild beasts."

The "direct" communication of emotion through artistic means, like roughly carved woodcuts; vigorous brushstrokes; intense, often non-local color; and subjects that were drawn from counter-cultural bohemian life, and the city. Freed color from naturalism and symbolism. "In 1913, trying desperately to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world, I sought refuge in the form of the square." "The departure of art from the objective world and the discovery of new subject matter based only on the artist's inner need". Their de-skilled form of primitivism inspired a critic to describe them as "wild beasts."