Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

German, 1880-1938

BiographyRegarded as one of the most talented and influential German Expressionist artists, the painter, printmaker and sculptor Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) played a leadership role in founding the artist’s group Brücke (Bridge) that flourished in Dresden and Berlin before World War I. The group’s official program, published in 1906, advocated the rejection of traditional academic styles in favor of new modes of representation, seeking to form a "bridge" between past and future artistic expression.

Both urban and rural environments were important themes of Brücke, and of the group, Kirchner was the most committed to the urban experience. Trained as an architect, he initially turned to French avant-garde innovations (Fauves, V. Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin) but subsequently incorporated a range of stylistic and ideological sources- ranging from Albrecht Dürer and German Renaissance art to African, Indian and Oceanic art- in the formulation of his own pictorial vocabulary. The period between 1911- 1915 marks the highpoint of the artist’s career during which time he concentrated upon depictions of urban life; its parks and gardens, rows of houses, railroad bridges, dance halls, cafes and street scenes. With his move to Berlin in 1911, Kirchner’s compositions undergo a stylistic shift away from the fluid, curvilinear, Fauve-inspired designs that he favored previously, to the use of angular, harshly colorful, and deliberately distorted spaces and elongated forms. This new style, he stated, grew out of “the perception of movement” and was developed to describe the intense sensations engendered by urban life and its visual reality.

After the war, illness drove him to settle in Davos, Switzerland, where he continued to work until the late 1930’s. With the Nazis rise to power in the early 1930s and their removal of 639 of his paintings from public collections as part of the 1937 campaign against "Degenerate Art" he became increasingly depressed. Despondent and ill, the following year he took his own life.

Printmaking was an extremely integral and significant component of Kirchner’s art practice throughout his career; he created more than 2000 prints in woodcut, etching and lithography, most printed in small quantities by himself. Known for his unorthodox approach that resulted in unique effects and innovative designs, his important contribution to the history of graphic art builds upon the legacy of Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Paul Gauguin, among others.

Person TypeIndividual

Terms