By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2020
What this article is about
This article is about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a bohemian German painter and printmaker. He was part of a movement, epitomised by the group Die Brücke ('The Bridge', because it spanned the gap between the old world and the new), that developed a home-grown German expressionism and abstract art.
Kirchner had the misfortune to work at a time when his homeland was either at war or being driven towards it by Hitler's Nazi party. His brief experience of World War One left him with what we would now recognise as PTSD. That, and his loathing of the Nazis and all they stood for, including their treatment of people who did not fit their ideal, led to a lifelong struggle with drink and drugs. He took his own life in 1938, on the eve of World War Two.
By then he had seen his work exhibited, in 1937, as that of an 'un-German' degenerate. A show of 650 works had been mounted by Adolf Ziegler, Hitler's favourite painter, who was tasked with purging what the party saw as degenerate art. For Kirchner, who had spent his working life trying to create art of which Germans could be proud, this was deeply insulting. Yet he had enjoyed recognition and commercial success, with his work shown around the world. Today he is rightly recognised for his ground-breaking contribution to culture.
Education and influences
Kirchner was born in Bavaria, of Prussian and Huguenot descent. The Huguenots were French Protestants, famously persecuted in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that link must have resonated when he saw the Jews being persecuted in the 1930s. His father became a professor of paper sciences. Both parents encouraged his art, but all agreed he should gain a formal qualification. He studied architecture at Dresden, with a spell in Munich, and took his degree in 1905. Like many architecture courses today, it developed his artistic skills and his knowledge of art history.
His influences included:
- The other founders of Die Brücke, all architecture students: Fritz Bleyl, an expressionist graphic designer he met at university, and the painters and printmakers Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel.
- German Renaissance painters and printmakers: Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder.
- Rembrandt, the 17th-century Dutch draughtsman, painter and printmaker.
- The international avant-garde of his own day: the Swiss painters Ferdinand Hodler, Albert Müller, Hermann Scherer and Paul Camenisch, the Belgian Art Nouveau designer Henry van de Velde, the German abstract painter Fritz Winter, Paul Klee and the Norwegian Edvard Munch.
Die Brücke, and Rot Blau
The four artists who formed Die Brücke were proud of Germany. They wanted to affirm their national heritage and revive older media such as the woodcut. In a prospectus they declared that they wanted freedom in their work and their lives, and independence from the older established forces. The group dissolved in 1913, just before World War One.
What happened to its members?
- Fritz Bleyl left after only a couple of years, when he married, and stopped exhibiting.
- Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, like Kirchner, had work selected by Ziegler for 'Die Ausstellung Entartete Kunst', the Degenerate Art Exhibition. Schmidt-Rottluff was expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts and the painters' guild and banned from painting. Some of Heckel's work was barred from public display by the Dresden police, and much was torn out of galleries and museums and destroyed.
- Kirchner was forced to resign from the Prussian Academy of Arts after the Nazis took power in 1933, and was expelled from the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He was the only one of the four who did not survive World War Two.
A second avant-garde group, 'Rot Blau' ('Red Blue'), was based in Basel, Switzerland. Friends pressed Kirchner to join it between 1925 and 1929. He was so upset when the group pledged allegiance to him that he wrote it an open letter refusing to be associated with it or to be its patron.
Kirchner on the Nazis
His feelings towards Rot Blau were warm compared with those he had for Hitler and his cronies. Of the Nazis' effect on his legacy, his country and its people, he wrote:
'Here we have been hearing terrible rumours about torture of the Jews, but it’s all surely untrue. I’m a little tired and sad about the situation up there. There is a war in the air. In the museums, the hard-won cultural achievements of the last 20 years are being destroyed, and yet the reason why we founded the Brücke was to encourage truly German art, made in Germany. And now it is supposed to be un-German. Dear God. It does upset me'.
Illness and a bohemian life
Kirchner knew war. He broke off from art to volunteer for the German artillery in 1914 and served as a driver. Within a year or so he had a mental breakdown, was invalided out and sent for treatment, which continued for many years. He seemed largely better after 1920, though some close to him always feared for him. He was prescribed powerful drugs, was a hard drinker and had health problems caused by smoking.
He also lived a dissolute, bohemian life. It was common knowledge that both models and artists went naked in his studio, and one of the models was only 15. Some models, such as Doris Große, became long-term lovers, and many of his subjects were sex workers. His life partner, Erna Schilling, had to accept his affairs, notably with a dancer, Nina Hand, whom he moved into their home despite Erna's protests.
None of this would have recommended him to the Nazis. Yet he was commercially successful, because not everyone agreed that his work was a blight on Germany.
Switzerland
Kirchner found something of a haven in Switzerland. He loved the country and its people, and particularly Davos. Three months after Germany annexed Austria, his fear that Switzerland would be next overwhelmed him, and he died by his own hand outside his home.
Conclusion
Kirchner was a pivotal artist who resisted all that the Nazis stood for, and ultimately paid with his life.
There are many sources of unframed Kirchner prints online. See www.amazon.co.uk/ODSAN-Tent-Ludwig-Kirchner-Unframed/dp/B01HS6W57Y as an example.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framer will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang. EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and sales@EasyFrame.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!