Unknown

Layout:

Baseline Co Ltd

61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street

Nam Minh Long Building, 4th floor

District 3, Hô Chi Minh-City

Vietnam

No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyrights on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we would appreciate notification

ISBN 978-1-78160-822-7

“For me this is out of the question. Nor do I regret it… The delights the world affords are the same everywhere, differing only in their outer forms. Here one learns how to see further and go deeper than in ‘modern’ life, which is generally so very much more superficial despite its wealth of outer forms.”

— Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Self-Portrait, Double Portrait, 1914.

Oil on canvas, 60 x 49 cm,

Staatlische Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Biography

6th May 1880: Birth of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Aschaffenburg, into a high-class family. Son of Ernst Kirchner (1847-1921) and Maria Elise Franke (1851-1928).

1886: The family move to Francfort-sur-le-Main, and then in 1887 they move to Perlen, near Luzerne.

1901: Following his father’s wishes, he enrolls in the Technical College in Dresden to study Architecture.

1903-04: Leaves Munich to study Art, takes lessons at the school of Wilhelm von Debschitz and Hermann Obrist. His numerous visits to museums and art galleries confirm his decision to become a professional artist. In October he travels to Nuremberg to complete his studies.

7th June 1905: After returning to Dresden, he joins up with his friends Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmitt-Rotluff to form the group Die Brücke, giving themselves the job of reviving German art which has been suppressed by academic tradition.

Nov 1905: First exhibition of Die Brücke at the P.H. Beyer and Sohn Gallery in Leipzig. The group works together in the rented studio that they share.

1906: Meets Doris Große who will become his preferred model until 1911.

1-21st Sept 1907: Group exhibition at the Emil Richter Art Gallery in Dresden.

1907-11: Spends his summers in Goppeln, at Lake Moritzburg and Fehmarn Island with the other members of Die Brücke, discovering the joys of sports and outdoor life that were very fashionable in the 1910s. They develop an ideal based upon a return to a primitive life which will illustrate their art through a new expressive form.

Jan 1908: Exhibition of Kirchner with Karl Schmitt-Rotluff at the August Dörbrandt, Braunschweig.

1909: Kirchner and his friends visit the Matisse exhibition at the Paul Cassirer Gallery in Berlin. The members of Die Brücke, influenced by this discovery of Fauvism, use it as a way to develop their already expressive use of color.

1913-15: During his years in Berlin, Kirchner produces an extensive series of representations of modern city life in the German metropolis while at the same time indulging regularly and excessively in the drinking of alcohol.

1915: At the outbreak of the First World War Kirchner fights wearing the “involuntary volunteer” badge. Unable to bear the discipline, he falls into a deep depression which causes him to be discharged and sent for rehabilitation to Taunus and later Davos in Switzerland. Despite a growing dependence on morphine, sleeping pills and alcohol, he still manages to produces some of his most important work.

1917: Kirchner moves to Davos for good eventually buying a farm in Mélèzes (the Swiss Alps) where he receives the support of the art collector Dr. Carl Hagemann, as well as that of the Belgian architect Henri van de Velde and the family of Dr. Spengler. He continues to work and his health improves. His works are exhibited in Switzerland and Germany.

1921: 50 of his works are shown at the Kronprinzen palace of Berlin where he receives positive feedback, cementing his role as the leader of Expressionism.

1925-26: Kirchner returns for the first time to Germany after his Swiss exile. His reputation grows as the first monograph dedicated to his work is published, as well as a Catalogue Raisonné of his main graphic productions, public reviews and works.

1928: Takes part in the Biennale of Venice which demonstrates his popularity within his own country.

1936: Kirchner is profoundly affected by the increasing threat of Nazism since the invasion of Austria.

1937: The Nazis qualify his work as “degenerative art” and confiscate all his plates shown in German museums, causing him great suffering. The pressure of the war and a relapse of his illness force him into a new depression, during which he destroys most of his work. Despite this, his international recognition remains strong, with exhibitions of his works in the USA, in both Detroit and New York.

15th June 1938: Tired and exasperated by the political situation of Germany at the time, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner puts an end to his life.

What is Expressionism?

“Expressionism” has meant different things at different times. In the sense we use the term today, certainly when we speak of “German Expressionism,” it refers to a broad, cultural movement that emerged from Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century. Yet Expressionism is complex and contradictory. It encompassed the liberation of the body as much as the excavation of the psyche. And within its motley ranks could be found political apathy, even chauvinism, as well as revolutionary commitment.

Nude Girl in the Shadows of a Branch

1905

Oil on board, 37 x 30 cm

Kirchner Museum, Davos

The first part of this book is structured thematically, rather than chronologically, in order to draw out some of the more common characteristics and preoccupations of the movement. The second part consists of short essays on a selection of individual Expressionists, highlighting the distinctive aspects of each artist’s work. Expressionism’s tangled roots reach far back into history, and range widely across geographical terrain. Two of its most important sources are neither modern, nor European: the art of the Middle Ages and the art of tribal or so-called “primitive” peoples.

Nude Laying on a Sofa (Isabella)

1906-1907

Charcoal on pencil, 68.5 x 89 cm

Private collection

A third has little to do with visual art at all — the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. To complicate matters further, the word “Expressionism” initially meant something different. Until about 1912, it was used generally to describe progressive art in Europe, chiefly France, that was clearly different from Impressionism, or that even appeared to be “anti-Impressionist.” So, ironically, it was first applied most often to non-German artists such as Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse and Van Gogh. In practice, well up to the outbreak of the First World War, “Expressionism” was still a catch-all phrase for the latest modern, fauvist, futurist or cubist art.

Laying Nude (Isabella)

1906

Charcoal, 90 x 69 cm

Staatliche Museen, Kassel

The important Sonderbund exhibition staged in Cologne in 1912, for example, used the term to refer to the newest German painting together with international artists. Here though, the shift was already beginning. The exhibition organisers and most critics emphasised the affinity of the “Expressionism” of the German avant-garde with that of the Dutch Van Gogh and the guest of honour at the show, the Norwegian Edvard Munch. In so doing, they slightly played down the prior significance of French artists, such as Matisse, and steered the concept of Expressionism in a distinctly “Northern” direction. Munch himself was stunned when he saw the show.

Doris with a Ruff

1906-1908

Oil on board, 70 x 52 cm

Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza, Lugano

“There is a collection here of all the wildest paintings in Europe,” he wrote to a friend, “Cologne Cathedral is shaking to its very foundations.” More than geography though, this shift highlighted Expressionist qualities as lying not so much in innovative formal means for description of the physical world, but in the communication of a particularly sensitive, even slightly neurotic, perception of the world, which went beyond mere appearances. As in the work of Van Gogh and Munch, individual, subjective human experience was its focus. As it gathered momentum, one thing became abundantly clear; Expressionism was not a “style.”

Green House

1907

Oil on canvas, 70 x 59 cm

Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna

This helps to explain why curators, critics, dealers and the artists themselves could rarely agree on the use or meaning of the term. Nonetheless, “Expressionism” gained wide currency across the arts in Germany and Austria. It was first applied to painting, sculpture and printmaking and a little later to literature, theatre and dance. It has been argued that while Expressionism’s impact on the visual arts was most successful, its’ impact on music was the most radical, involving elements such as dissonance and atonality in the works of many composers (especially in Vienna) from Gustav Mahler to Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.

Portrait of a Man, Hans Frisch

1907

Oil on canvas, 115 x 115 cm

Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum

San Antonio (Texas)