Wilhelm Worringer

Wilhelm Robert Worringer (13 January 1881 in Aachen – 29 March 1965 in Munich) was a German art-historian known for his theories about abstract art and its relation to avant-garde movements such as German Expressionism. Through his influence on the art-critic T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), his ideas became influential in the development of early British modernism, especially Vorticism.

Biography Worringer studied art history in Freiburg, Berlin, and Munich before moving to Bern, where he got his Ph.D. in 1907.

Worringer posited a direct relationship between the perception of art and the individual. His claim that "we sense ourselves in the forms of a work of art" led to a formula, "The aesthetic sense is an objectivized sense of the self."