Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

German painter

• Born: May 6, 1880
• Birthplace: Aschaffenburg, Bavaria (now in Germany)
• Died: June 15, 1938
• Place of death: Near Davos, Switzerland

Kirchner was one of the founders and a leading artist of German expressionism a major early twentieth century art movement whose basic ideas effectively challenged the then-dominant Impressionistic art and influenced contemporary literature, music, drama, and film.

Early Life

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (ehrnst LEWD-veek KEERK-nehr) was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany. His father was a chemical engineer; his mother came from a merchant family. On his father’s side, Kirchner was descended from a long line of scholars and professionals. His father once had wanted to be an artist. Therefore, when the son at the age of four demonstrated a precocious talent for art, he was encouraged by his parents, who hired private tutors in drawing and watercolors. The young Kirchner was high-strung and impressionable, and the many moves necessitated by the father’s changes in employment had a pronounced effect on the boy’s artistic development. In Frankfurt am Main, for example, Kirchner was exposed to big-city life and to the works of Flemish primitives and German Renaissance artists in the city museum.

Further moves involved Switzerland. In 1890, his father secured a professorship at the Technical Institute of Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt), and the traveling ceased. In 1898, Kirchner visited Nuremberg and became acquainted with the works of the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer, who became a guiding influence in his life. Kirchner was especially impressed by the woodcuts, whereby strong messages could be conveyed by the sparing use of bold lines and colors.

At eighteen, Kirchner was determined to become an artist, although his parents advised him to train in a more secure profession, reserving art as an avocation. Largely to satisfy his parents, Kirchner in 1901 enrolled in the Dresden Technical Institute to study architecture. In 1903-1904, he visited Munich, Germany’s artistic capital, and took conventional courses in life drawing and color theory. He spent time in Munich’s museums examining the works of German Renaissance masters and the drawings of Rembrandt, which inspired him to learn the art of sketching from life. At the time, Kirchner visited an exhibition of the best in modern German art heavily influenced by French Impressionism and sadly noted the contrast between these pallid works and the vigor of early German art as well as the pulsating life of contemporary Munich. Kirchner received his degree in architecture in 1905. The filial obligation completed, he now devoted his life to art. He never practiced architecture.

Life’s Work

By this time, Kirchner had formed his theory on art, from which he never deviated. His chief aim was to bring life and art into harmony. He would put aside bourgeois constraint and the deadening influence of the academician. He would create from nature and life and, through the innovative, imaginative use of line and color, give the viewer not only recognition and truth about life but also heightened awareness, greater appreciation, and deeper understanding of the subject material. Reality would be distorted to communicate inner visions.

Kirchner found three like-minded colleagues. In 1905, they formed a group called Die Brücke (the bridge), taking the name from a work by Friedrich Nietzsche to the effect that a human being is not end in him- or herself but a “bridge.” The artist is to be the creative bridge between the viewer and the work of art.

The year 1905 was also pivotal for European art. In Paris a group of renegade artists in protest against the controlled theories and methodology of French Impressionism showed works so violent in the use of color, so unconventional in form and line, that they were called the “fauves,” or “wild beasts.” Die Brücke similarly rebelled against prevailing German art that they believed to be infused with philistine prejudice and bourgeois morality. In a manifesto, Kirchner called for a new generation of creators from among the young and told them: “We want to create for ourselves freedom to move and to live. . . . He belongs with us, who renders with immediacy and authenticity that which drives him to creation.” Following Kirchner’s directive, the group painted from nature or life, using live models. The stress was not on a particular style but rather on the artist’s individual creativity.

Kirchner’s artistic development can be divided into three periods, each with its dominant style: 1905-1911, the formative Brücke period; 1911-1917, the mature Berlin period; 1917-1938, the Swiss period. The Brücke years were devoted to experimentation and development. His works were often decorative, and many clearly show the influence of other artists. Kirchner carefully studied others’ works, and, even though influenced, he was never dominated by them. From the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh and from his own experimentation, Kirchner learned that the use of color should be emotional and intuitive rather than “scientific” and rational. He became skilled in its effective use. A typical Kirchner work of the period is Emmy Frisch with Red Flowers (1906). Even though Kirchner’s creation, this painting shows the influence of the French Impressionists.

More important to Kirchner’s artistic development during the Brücke years was his mastery of media and development of work habits. He learned woodcutting, lithography, and engraving. He had always drawn or sketched in pencil, crayon, pastels, and pen and ink and became a master draftsman. He was totally absorbed in his work, and, despite his relatively short life, his output was formidable his oils numbered in the hundreds; his drawings and graphics numbered in the thousands. Despite the volume of his work, he was always a perfectionist. Works that did not meet his exacting standards were either reworked or destroyed.

In 1911, Die Brücke moved to Berlin, hoping to find in the German capital a wider audience and greater tolerance. In 1912, Kirchner met the dancer-model Erna Schilling, who became his common-law wife and life-long companion. His work in the city alternated with painting nudes in bucolic settings on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn. In 1912, Kirchner believed that he was completely developed as an artist.

In 1913, Die Brücke was dissolved. The temperaments of its members had become too disparate for the artists to continue working as a group. Kirchner now focused his attention on what many consider to be his greatest artistic achievement capturing the spirit of a great metropolis in his street scenes. Kirchner was fascinated by the city: its pulsating life, in which he found a strong erotic element; its deceptive glitter; its amorality; and its alienation. He also realized that it was an indispensable part of the life of modern man. Typical of his work of this period was Street, Berlin (1913). This work is uniquely Kirchner: discordant colors, bold outlines, distorted perspective, a sense of instability achieved by the use of inverted triangles. A “truth” made patently clear is the public condemnation of and the private attraction to the streetwalker.

The coming of the war in 1914 was devastating to Kirchner both mentally and physically. What Kirchner especially hated was the dehumanizing element of the military its destruction of the individual. Art became a form of protest such as his Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915). Kirchner is in uniform, but his eyes are those of a dully uncomprehending robot. In the background is a waiting model and an unfinished painting. His right arm is upraised but the hand the painting hand has been amputated. He is useless both as an artist and as a soldier. Kirchner, who never saw service, suffered both a physical and a mental collapse. After time spent in sanatoriums, he found his way in 1917 to Switzerland, where, except for short trips to Germany, he remained for the rest of his life.

The ruggedly beautiful Alpine area as well as the ministrations of the kindly peasants gradually restored Kirchner’s shattered health. He now began his third and last period, this one dominated by his Alpine scenes. These scenes were the closest the mature Kirchner would get to representative art, but these were not postcard scenes. Their structure was monumental and architectural; the use of color was often unconventional. A typical work is View of Basel and the Rhine (1935).

Kirchner’s Alpine pictures were influenced by his working in tapestry design. He found an experienced tapestry weaver, and together they created a number of tapestries. Kirchner also sculpted and carved in wood, and he designed furniture, jewelry, and theater sets. He continued working as an expressionist, and his work now was influenced by the Surrealists and Pablo Picasso. Kirchner became a major influence in the development of Swiss art, training several prominent Swiss artists and starting the Blue-Green School of Swiss Art.

Kirchner’s artistic works were increasingly appreciated in turbulent but tolerant Weimar Germany. A series of important exhibitions of his works were held not only in Germany but also in Switzerland and the United States. In 1931, Kirchner was belatedly elected to the Berlin Academy of Plastic Arts. Because of the troubled financial situation in Germany, which was his chief market, the sale of his artworks remained small. Kirchner was never to know affluence.

The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was more devastating to Kirchner than the war. He was designated a “degenerate” artist; his works could be neither displayed nor sold, and 639 of his paintings were removed from German museums and either destroyed or sold for pittances. The most crushing blow came in 1937, when a traveling exhibit of “degenerate art,” including twenty-five of Kirchner’s works, was organized by the Nazis. The public humiliation was more than the sensitive artist, already broken in health, could bear. On June 15, 1938, leaving an unfinished work on his easel, Kirchner went into a quiet field beside his cabin and shot two bullets into his heart.

Significance

The greatness of Kirchner as an artist lies principally in his single-minded purpose of giving “expression” and honest subjective meaning to his art. Toward achieving this end, he became a master of most artistic media, utilizing in an innovative and creative way color, form, line, perspective, and symbols. Kirchner contributed to making expressionism a major art movement whose influence was felt in literature, music, and film. Expressionism, international in scope, emerged in the 1980’s as “neo-expressionism,” involving the works of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Georg Baselitz, and Anselm Kiefer.

Bibliography

Gordon, Donald E. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. Donald Gordon is considered an authority in English on Kirchner. The book contains an account by periods of Kirchner’s artistic career; color plates of his best-known works with accompanying criticisms; locations of the works; and black-and-white reproductions of 240 of the artist’s works arranged in chronological order.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Expressionism: Art and Idea. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. This book provides a clear account of the development of expressionism, from its inception at the turn of the century to the 1980’s. Kirchner is seen as a major influence.

Joachimides, Christos M., Norman Rosenthal, and Wieland Schmied, eds. German Art in the Twentieth Century. New York: Neues, 1985. A handsomely illustrated volume with color plates of the works of fifty-two German artists from Kirchner to Kiefer. The continuing influence of expressionism is clearly visible. Kirchner is extensively discussed in two essays and a short biography. His association with “degenerate art” is covered in a separate essay.

Myers, Bernard S. The German Expressionists. New York: Praeger, 1957. Although not as comprehensive as Gordon, Myers gives a highly readable account of the development of German expressionism, including a separate essay on Kirchner. Contains numerous color and black-and-white plates.

Springer, Peter. Hand and Head: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Self-Portrait as a Soldier Translated by Susan Ray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Springer analyzes Kirchner’s self-portrait, using Kirchner’s letters and other documents to re-create the artist’s military service and his ambivalence toward war.

Zigrosser, Carl. The Expressionists: A Survey of Their Graphic Art. New York: George Braziller, 1957. For many, the greatness of Kirchner is expressed in the graphic arts. The work contains thirty-five graphic works of the Brücke artists, including twelve by Kirchner with a fine accompanying text.