The Künstlergruppe Brücke was founded on 7 June 1905 in Dresden by four architecture students: They were united by a common aim to break new boundaries in art.
They were self-taught as artists, their only training from private drawing lessons. They nevertheless acted as a group immediately, seeing themselves as pioneers who would change the world from its very basis and revive art. In their first manifesto, which they called a Programm (1906), they named the impulses behind their work: faith in the future, the strength of youth, the value of directness and authenticity, and the rejection of the older forces of the establishment. Although the use of pure colour and a more two-dimensional treatment of subject-matter had obvious similarities with Fauvist art, and in particular that of Henri Matisse, whose work the group saw at an exhibition in Berlin in 1908, the artists of Die Brücke aimed to encompass all life, rather than just the field of art, with their radical stance.