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Biographical Information:
Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and graphic artist and a leading figure in "Die Bruecke" art movement. His first interests were in early German woodcut artists such as Albrecht Duerer. In 1901, while in Dresden studying architecture, he began to paint and in 1903-04 attended art school. He then returned to architecture, but continued to paint. In 1904 Kirchner developed a neoimpressionist style and became influenced by medieval German art and Japanese prints. At this time he also studied African and South Pacific art which proved significant in the development of his future primitivistic leanings and those of "Die Bruecke".
In 1905 an art association called "Die Bruecke" -- the bridge linking " all the revolutionary and fermenting elements" -- was organized by a group of young, German architecture students, who all wanted to be painters. They were drawn together by their opposition to the art that surrounded them, especially academic art and fashionable Impressionism. They rented an empty shop in a workers' district in Dresden and began to paint, sculpt, and make woodcuts together. Their intensive study of the possibilities of woodcuts did most to formulate their styles and to clarify their directions. In 1906 Heckel, then working for an architect, persuaded a manufacturer for whom he had executed a showroom to permit the Bruecke artists to exhibit there. This was the historic first Bruecke exhibition, which marked the emergence of 20-th century German
Expressionism. Despite developing differences in style among the artists, a hard, Gothic angularity permeated many of their works. During the summers of 1907-1909, they made studies of the nude in nature, and during the winters they worked in the studios of Erich Heckel and Kirchner. As the influence of Van Gogh made itself increasingly felt in the group, Kirchner's color became more spatulated and expressively brilliant. Despite French Fauvist influence, Kirchner and his circle leaned toward an erotomania derived from Edvard Munch, with symbolic representation of men and women portrayed together in various circumstances. In 1911, "Die Bruecke" moved to Berlin and there the exciting life of the city added a psychological and dynamic quality and revealed Kirchner as the outstanding and typical figurative expressionist. By 1913 "Die Bruecke" was dissolved as an association, and the artists proceeded individually.
For subject matter Kirchner looked to contemporary life - landscape, portraits of friends, and nudes in natural settings - rejecting the artificial set-up of academic studios. In both Dresden and Berlin, he recorded the streets and inhabitants of the city and the bohemian life of its nightclubs, cabarets, and circuses. In Berlin he painted a series of street scenes in which the spaces are confined and precipitously tilted, and the figures are elongated into angular shapes by long feathered strokes. He aimed to capture the animation of his first impressions, and the strong sense of movement may indicate his borrowing from Italian Futurist painting, as well as the impact of Cubism. In the charged atmosphere of the street, and the distorted Gothic forms, Kirchner describes the condition of modern urban life. These city scenes - "Street Scene, Berlin", 1913 - have a philosophical intention in their portrayal of anonymous masklike faces moving aimlessly about the streets. They convey his interpretive attitude, the basic expressionist quality of searching for some deeper value beyond the outward appearance, which Kirchner altered by distortions of form, color and space.
When World War I broke out Kirchner enlisted in the military, but because of a physical and mental breakdown he was discharged in 1915. He recuperated in Switzerland, where he continued to live and work near Davos until his death by suicide in 1938. Kirchner continued to renew his style, painting many of his older themes along with serene Alpine landscapes and sympathetic portrayals of Swiss peasant life. His nervous, graphic Berlin style yielded to a more sculpturesque form and a new color quality, no longer stressing dissonances but emphasizing an enamellike brilliance.
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Artists Works:
KIRCHNER
Kirchner, Carol Lynn
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig
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Museum Resources:
Neue Nationalgalerie
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Commercial Resources:
Galerie Henze und Ketterer AG
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