Expressionism is less a single movement than a tendency that appeared simultaneously across several national cultures in the early 20th century: the deliberate distortion of colour, form and line to convey emotional or psychological states rather than to describe external reality. Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893) prefigured it; the German groups Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) gave it collective identity. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's jagged Berlin street scenes, Franz Marc's blue horses, Oskar Kokoschka's raw, slashing portraits — all prioritise the artist's inner experience over faithful observation. In cinema, German Expressionist films of the 1920s (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu) used distorted sets and high-contrast lighting to externalise psychological states. Abstract Expressionism in 1940s–50s America — Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko — was its direct heir.