Why is the subject in the painting looking like that? Why does he have that look? How should I name it?

Der Turm der blauen Pferde (The Tower of Blue Horses), Franz Marc, oil, 1913

"Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions." Wassily Kandinsky

Hello, and welcome back to a newly revitalized r/expressionism!

I, u/TheLunaLovelace, and u/organist1999 will be moderating this subreddit moving forward. It is our goal to turn this dead forum into an active and lively community dedicated to the discussion of the artistic movement known as Expressionism. We also moderate a number of other small subreddits related to late 19th and early 20th century art movements, such as r/impressionism and r/neoimpressionism. We are very happy to be bringing r/expressionism into this as yet unnamed network. Please check the sidebar for updated subreddit rules and more info. Thanks!

A brief introduction to the history of Expressionism: Expressionism as an artistic movement developed primarily in northern Europe in the early 20th century, with large numbers of Expressionist artists coming together in cities such as Paris, Berlin and Munich. Expressionist painters mainly concentrated on attempting to express the internal feelings of their subjects, rather than focusing on creating accurate likeness of the physical world. This avant-garde ethos is why it is often viewed as a reaction to the earlier Impressionist movement (a movement from which several notable Expressionist artists originated).

In the 1930s the United States, particularly the city of Boston, Massachusetts, became the cultural epicenter of the Expressionist movement following the rise of Nazism in Germany, under which modern art was dubbed “degenerate art”.