Background

Ernst Kirchner was born on May 6, 1880 in Aschaffenburg, Bayern, Germany. After years of travel, his family settled in Chemnitz in 1890.

Education

Kirchner attended schools in Frankfurt and Perlen until his father earned the position of Professor of Paper Sciences at the College of technology in Chemnitz, where Kirchner attended secondary school. From 1901 to 1905 he studied architecture at the Dresden Technische Hochschule, and pictorial art in Munich at the Kunsthochschule and at an experimental art school established by Wilhelm von Debschitz and Hermann Obrist.

Career

During his studying, Kirchner chose to dedicate himself to fine art rather than architecture. In 1905, Kirchner and his friend Bleyl, along with fellow architecture students Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artist group "Die Brücke." The aim was to eschew traditional academic styles and to create a new mode of artistic expression, forming a "bridge" between classical motifs of the past and the present avant-garde. Die Brücke expressed extreme emotion through crude lines and a vibrant, unnatural color palette. The group would meet in an old butcher's shop that served as Kirchner's studio to practice figure drawing. Much of the artwork created by Die Brücke was a direct response to the graphic work of Albrecht Dürer and the bold color palette of the Neo-Impressionists.

In 1906, Kirchner and Die Brücke held their first group exhibition in a lamp factory. The female nude, inspired by late-night studio meetings, was the primary subject of the exhibition. Kirchner's woodcut print, "Nude Dancers" painted in 1909, exemplifies the energetic tone of the exhibition. The crude, graphic lines depict naked women dancing on a stage. Die Brücke ended in 1913 with Kirchner's publication of "Chronik der Brücke", which focused on the "freedom of life and of movement against the long-established older forces."

Thereafter Kirchner desired to establish his own identity as an artist. He developed an interest in industrialization and the alienation experienced by individuals in cities. Gradually, he turned his attention away from the female nude and toward the Berlin streets with the creation of the "Strassenbilder" series in 1915. These paintings focus on the energetic life of modern Berlin, as he observed the changing political situation of World War I and its impact on German culture. Kirchner depicted crowds of people with bold, expressive brushstrokes and in brash colors of blue, green, orange, and pink.

Kirchner voluntarily joined the military in 1915, though he was released shortly after due to a nervous breakdown. He recovered in several Swiss hospitals between 1916 and 1917. Scarred by his military experience, in 1918 he moved to a farmhouse in the Alps, near Davos, where his new residence inspired a series of mountain landscapes.

His reputation as a leading German Expressionist continued to grow with exhibitions in Switzerland and Germany in the 1920s. His first monograph and catalog of graphic works were published in 1926. He was commissioned to create several murals in the Folkwang Museum in 1927, and in 1928 was invited to take part in the Venice Biennale. In 1931, as his success continued, Kirchner became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1933, however, German Nazis branded Kirchner as "Degenerate artist," forcing him to resign from the Berlin Academy of Arts. Over 600 of his works were detained or destroyed by the Nazi regime. The traumatic impact of these events led to his suicide on July 15, 1938.

Achievements

• Ernst was highly famous as one of the founders of the artists group "Die Brücke", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art. His works are widely known for their unsettling effects of psychological tension and eroticism. In November 2006 at Christie's, Kirchner's Street Scene, "Berlin" fetched $38 million, a record for the artist.
  
  

Works

More photos

• painting

  • View of Basel and the Rhine

  • Still Life with Duck and Snipe

  • Nudes in a Meadow

  • Girl with Long Hair

  • Couple

  • Store in the Rain

  • Street Scene in front of a Barbershop

  • Portrait of Gerda

  • Blond Woman in a Red Dress, Portrait of Elisabeth Hembus

  • Rhaetian Railway, Davos

  • Women on the Street

  • Portrait of a Woman

  • Circus Rider

  • Portrait

  • Dance School

  • Profile Head (Self-Portrait)

  • Colourful Dance

  • Königstein and railway

  • Station in Davos

  • Two Yellow Knots with Bunch of Flowers

  • Hallesches Tor, Berlin

  • The Café

  • The Railway Overpass

  • Mary Wigman's Dance of the Dead

  • Nude Woman Combing Her Hair

  • Frauenkirche

  • Bathers at Sea

  • Small French

  • Coffee Drinking Women

  • Three Women in a Cafe

  • Dancer

  • In the Greenhouse

  • Café in Davos

  • Gasometer in Vorortbahn

  • Harnessed Team

  • Japanese

  • Dodo with a Japanese Umbrella

  • Street, Berlin

  • Mountains in Winter

  • Female Nude Kneeling before a Red Screen

  • Man's Head. Self-portrait

  • Frankfurter Westhafen

  • Woman before the Mirror

  • Railway in Dresden

  • Cocotte on the Road

  • Three Nudes in the Forest

  • Study of a Head

  • Women and Sculptures on the Beach

  • Berlin Street Scene

  • Arcrobats

  • Railway Underpass in Dresden

  • Milliner with Hat

  • Street Scene: In Front of the Shop Window

  • Sailboats at Fehmarn

  • Interieur

  • Erna with Cigarette

  • Pink Roses

  • Mask Dance

  • Marcella

  • Man and Naked Woman

  • Girl with Cat (Franzi)

  • NudeYoung Woman in Front of a Oven

  • Dodo and Her Son

  • Tavern

  • Cows at Sunset

  • Dancer

  • Self-Portrait

  • Dodo with a Japanese Umbrella

  • Still Life with Sculpture

  • Still Life with Sculpture

  • Design for the Wall Painting Colourful Dance

  • Graef and friend

  • Entertainment

  • Naked Women on Meadow

  • Davos in Summer

  • Königstein with Red Church

  • Lovers (The kiss)

  • Dancing Female Nude, Gret Palucca

  • Woman in a Green Blouse

  • Sertigweg

  • Female Artist

  • Naked girl Behind the Curtain (Franzi)

  • Dodo with Large Fan

  • The Tent

  • Station in Davos

  • English Dance Couple

  • Street

  • Windswept Firs

  • Three Women

  • Two Railway Bridges in Dresden

  • Bathing Women in a Room

  • Equestrienne

  • KG Brücke

  • Der Belle Alliance Platz in Berlin

  • Nude in Orange and Yellow

  • Man's Head. Self-portrait

  • Street Scene

  • Lovers in the Bibliothek

  • Two Women in a Cafe

  • Snowy Landscape

  • Traber Team

  • Self-Portrait with a Model

  • Lützowufer (Banks of the Canal) at the Mornig

  • Reclining Nude (Isabella)

  • Two Brothers

  • Red Tree on the Beach

  • Bathers under Trees

  • Czardas Dancers

  • Villa in Dresden

  • Head of the Painter (Self-portrait)

  • Three Bathers on the Beach

  • Artist Begging for Applause

  • Five Women on the Street

  • Dancer and Audience

  • Equestrienne

  • Dance

  • View from the Window

  • Mountains and Houses in the Snow

  • Red Elisabeth Riverbank, Berlin

  • After the Bath

  • Walking Man in the Meadow

  • Stooping Act in Space

  • Bathing Women and Children

  • Two Nudes in the Wood II

  • Half-Naked Woman with a Hat

  • Capelli Rossi (Red Hair)

  • The Kiss

  • Street in the Rain

  • Tram and Rail

  • Station in Königstein

  • Dr. O. Kohnstamm

  • Self-portrait

  • Self-Portrait as a Soldier

  • Café Chantant II

  • Reclining Nude in a Bathtub with Pulled on Legs

  • The Garden Cafe

  • Mountain Forest

  • The Red Tower in Halle

  • Sertigtal in Autumn

  • Playing Children

  • Entcounter

  • Lovers

  • Couple

  • Railways in the Taunus

  • Trains Gorge near Monstein

  • Kokottenkopf with Feathered Hat

  • Dodo Head on Pillow

  • The Rhine Bridge

  • Dancing Couple

  • Dance Group of the Mary Wigman School in Dresden

  • The French are Sitting on the Couch

  • Schimmeldressurakt

  • Boy with Arrow

  • Erna Japanschirm

  • Group of artists

  • Female Nudes Striding into the Sea

  • Self-Portrait as an Invalid

  • Five Women at the Street

  • Gasometer in Schöneberg

  • Reclining Female Nude

  • Self-portrait

  • Mask Dance

  • Staffelalp by Moonlight

  • Wildboden Mountains Forest

  • Two Bathers

  • The Dance between the Women

  • Sledge in the Fog

  • Woman at Tea Time: Sick Woman

  • Spring (Königstein)

  • Great Lovers (Mr and Miss Hembus)

  • Staberhof Farm on Fehmarn I

  • Book illustration side of the military road

  • Woman is Walking over a Nighty Street

  • Sad Female Head

  • Three Bathers

  • Two Girls

  • Two Heads Looking at Each Other

  • Bridge in Wiesen

  • Winter Landscape in Moonlight

  • Three Faces

  • Portrait of Otto Mueller with Pipe

  • Playing Naked People

  • Milli

  • Walking Woman with Dog

  • Rhine bridge in Köln

  • Crouching Girl

  • Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

  • Head Bosshart

  • Nollendorfplatz

  • English Dancers

  • Mother and Children

  • Study on Red Tart

  • Head of a Sick Man

  • Palucca

  • Seated Lady (Dodo)

  • Hamburg Dancers

  • Men with Wheelbarrows

  • Head of a Sick Man. Self-Portrait

  • Bridge in Landwassertal

  • Sitting Girl

Views

The human figure was central to Kirchner's art. It was vital to the pictures that took his studio as their backdrop - pictures in which he captured models posing as well as aspects of his bohemian life. For Kirchner, the studio was an important nexus where art and life met. And, most commonly, he depicted the figure in movement, since he believed that this better expressed the fullness and vitality of the human body.

Kirchner's Expressionistic handling of paint represented a powerful reaction against the Impressionism that was dominant in German painting when he first emerged. For him, it marked a reaction against the staid civility of bourgeois life. Fauvism was particularly significant in directing his palette, encouraging him to use flat areas of unbroken, often unmixed color and simplified forms.

Kirchner believed that powerful forces - enlivening yet also destructive - dwelt beneath the veneer of Western civilization, and he believed that creativity offered a means of harnessing them. This outlook shaped the way in which he depicted men and women in his pictures, as people who often seem at war with themselves or their environment. It also encouraged his interest in Primitive art, in particular that of the Pacific Islands, for he considered that this work offered a more direct picture of those elemental energies. Primitive art was also important in directing Kirchner to a more simplified treatment of form.

Quotations: "A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things."

"It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to dissolve myself completely into the sensations of the surroundings in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form."

"Anyone who directly and honestly reproduces that force which impels him to create belongs to us."

"All art needs this visible world and will always need it. Quite simply because, being accessible to all, it is the key to all other worlds."

"Every day I studied the nude, and movement in the streets and in the shops. Out of the naturalistic surface with all its variations I wanted to derive the pictorially determined surface."

Membership

• Prussian Academy of Arts

• Die Brücke

Interests

• African and Polynesian art

• Artists

  Albrecht Dürer, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh

Connections

He had a relationship with Erna Schilling that lasted the rest of his life.

Friend:

Fritz Bleyl

Friend:

Erich Heckel

Friend:

Karl Schmidt

Lover:

Doris Große

Lover:

Erna Schilling

Friend:

Botho Graef

Friend:

Albert Müller

References

• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Great Masters in Art)
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: The Dresden and Berlin Years
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Imaginary Travels
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story, 1915
• Kirchner
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Retrospective
• Kirchner and the Berlin Street
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Berlin Street Scene
• ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER: Models, Nudes, Prostitutes (German Edition)
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Meister der Druckgraphik (German Edition)