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 The example of futurist painting entitled Side Wheeler, by Lyonel Feininger, furnishes one of the finest examples of the style, here chosen because of its transitional character to that related movement in German art known as "abstract expressionism." In Side Wheeler, interweaving angular planes of color finely balanced in harmonious grays, greens, and purples, unite to give a dynamic impression of a steamboat riding through a storm.
From all directions the lines of force react upon the boat so that it seems held stationary for a moment, though inevitably moving from left to right. The fact that the forms of the waves, the shape of the boat, its masts and wheels and the billowing smoke all dissolve into abstract angular patterns without plasticity, suggests a further development at the hands of Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Arp, and Klee. In this abstractionism, fluid forms would eventually flow into each other and partially naturalistic objects would change before our eyes into cubistic patterns.
Kandinsky, the leader of the expressionist school, which started in 1911, wrote a manifesto in 1912 entitled "Upon the Spiritual in Art." He explained that he wished to paint the representation not of objects but of moods. He used the principle of free association in composing his pictures, allowing the brush to proceed haphazardly with its drawing from one part of the canvas to another. The results he labeled "Improvisations" and "Compositions," much as though he were a musician idly playing scraps of melody and harmony upon the piano.
 Of all the expressionists, most successful for his ability to unite a futurist or a cubist technique with natural objects carrying associational. romantic overtones was Franz Marc, whose Gazelle in water color presents the characteristic color scheme of most abstract painting. The two crystalline forms on the right of the composition have enough plasticity to recall the beginnings of the expressionist movement in the works of Cézanne. The upper left part of the body of the gazelle likewise has enough modeling to suggest a rounded form.The rear of the gazelle's body, with its five triangular black strokes, seems flat. The pink area between the legs of the gazelle suggests a connection with the pink upper border of the large left triangle and the direction of this movement. Thus this static picture, like the Side Wheeler of Feininger, is strongly dynamic. This plastic Gazelle is also decoratively flat. At no place on the entire surface can the gaze rest except in the eye of the animal. Around that occult center one moves from prismatic to suggested spherical forms. There results one of the most significant paintings of 20th-century abstract art.
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