German Expressionism: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Germany, 1880 – 1938)


Dressage, 1908-1909

Couple (1908)

Love Scene, 1908


Houses in Dresden, 1909-10. Oil on canvas, 56 × 90 cm

Red Nudes  (1913-1925) oil on canvas

Variete at Frankfurt Städel

Königstein Station (1916)

Nues

Varietetänzerin, 1920
at Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Germany

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art. 

In 1933, his work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis and in 1937 over 600 of his works were sold or destroyed. In 1938 he committed suicide by gunshot.

In 1905, Kirchner, along with Bleyl and two other architecture students, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die Brücke ("The Bridge"). From then on, he committed himself to art. The group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the name) between the past and the present. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder, as well as contemporary international avant-garde movements. As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints.

from wikipedia



Otto Mueller (German 1874 – 1930)
Couple at the table, (Double portrait with Masha Mueller), c.1924