Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his many books are Nathan Oliveira (California, 2002), Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sculptor (1999), Beyond the Mainstream (1996), and Art in Our Times (1981).

“Selz has given us the final documentation of the Expressionist movement.”—Journal of Aesthetics and Criticism

"Mr. Selz has undertaken an exhaustive examination of the movement in Dresden, Munich, and Vienna...he uncovers much that is unfamiliar and presents what we already know in a meaningful historical perspective. His scholarship is dazzling and will earn him the gratitude of everyone who works in his field."—Yale Review

"The author has limited the scope of his study to the two central movements, Brucke and Blaue Reiter, and further confined himself to the brief period during which their concepts, as we know them, were being formulate. The book covers the period 905 to 1914; from the foundation of the Brucke to the outbreak of the war, including passages on the sources of the movements...The author provides the most intensive documentation yet of the formation of these two movements, the travels and associations of the artists, their exhibitions, controversies, and their theories as expressed in frequent quotations. Thus this book deals with the most intensely creative years and the crucial stages in the formation of the movement and its theories...With the appearance of this important reference book the field of German Expressionism has now been comprehensively outlined and explored."—The Art Bulletin