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Kirchner's Woodcuts a Thesis Submitted for Honors in The

Kirchner’s

A Thesis submitted for Honors in the Department of and Art History

Sean E. Barlett

April 8, 2019

Albion College

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Literature Review

Chapter 2: The Formation of Die Brücke and Their use of the

Chapter 3: Post , Kirchner’s Use of the Woodcut

Conclusion

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List of

Figure 1. , The Scream, Oil on Cardboard, 1893, National Gallery in Oslo,

Norway.

Figure 2. , Manifesto of 1906 (Front), Woodcut, 1906, Museum of

Modern Art, New York, New York.

Figure 3. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Manifesto of 1906 (Back), Woodcut, 1906, Museum of

Modern Art, New York, New York.

Figure 4. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bathers in a Room, Oil on Canvas, 1909, repainted in

1920, Unknown Location.

Figure 5. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Standing Nude with Hat, Oil on Canvas, 1910, Städel

Museum, , .

Figure 6. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nude Dancers (Nackte Tänzerinnen), Woodcut, 1909,

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York.

Figure 7. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Shed on the Bank of the Elbe, Woodcut, 1906, National

Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Figure 8. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alte und Junge Frau (Old and Young Woman),

Woodcut, 1921, Albion College Art Collection, Albion, Michigan.

Figure 9. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, In the Studio (Erna and Guest), Woodcut, c. 1918-

1921, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Figure 10. People queueing for the (Entartete Kunst) exhibition in

Munich, July 19, 1937, , New York, New York.

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Introduction

Expressionism was a late nineteenth and early twentieth-century that emphasized strong emotions and psychic states through subject matter, form, technique, and media. In these works, Expression was represented not only thematically, but also through medium. Although occurred throughout Europe, Germany may have provided the most fertile ground for the development of Expressionist movements.

At the end of the nineteenth century, there was no centralized style, but there had been art rebellions throughout the German art world, including the

Secession in 1893 and the in 1898.1 By 1903, the Secession was already on the verge of disbanding, and young German artists were well prepared to leave the safety of naturalism and conventional subject matter. 2

One of Expressionism’s early exemplars was Edvard Munch, whose , The

Scream created in 1893 (Figure 1), demonstrated the Expressionist viewpoint in its

‘agitated, disorienting rendering of a theme of hopelessness and alienation’.3 Munch’s focus on the individual self, shaped by fear, desire, death, sex and nature, made him an especially important influence to young German artists maturing at the turn of the century. Although Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh4 and French painter, sculptor, and printmaker were both important influences for the German Expressionists,

Munch was the only artist of the three who had direct contact with the German artists, which made his idea of the individual self as the central theme of his work, a major

1 Douglas Klahr, “Munich as Kunststadt, 1900–1937: Art, Architecture, and Civic Identity,” Oxford Art Journal, 34, no. 2 (June 2011), 179–201. 2 Dube Wolf-Dieter, The Expressionists, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1985), 8-11. 3 Horst H. Árnason, and Elizabeth Mansfield, History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010), 111-112. 4 Van Gogh was shown at the Galerie Arnold in Dresden in 1905. Wolf-Dieter Dube, The Expressionists, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 25. 4 influence on the Expressionists.5 German Romanticism was also strongly tied to

Expressionism for its emphasis on personal beauty, brooding loneliness, and focus on the intensely personal and sublime in culture and nature.

German Expressionism came to prominence in the early twentieth century when artists challenged art traditions that had increasingly failed to meet the expressive needs of contemporary artists. In many areas of Germany, especially in metropolitan centers like Dresden, Munich, and Berlin, artists responded to widespread anxiety about humanity’s increasingly discordant relationship with religion, spirituality, and the natural world. Rapid changes in technology including the invention and dissemination of automobiles, expanding train systems, electricity, and chemical innovations left people with a feeling that the world was expanding at a pace too rapid to comprehend. Freud’s theories of the unconscious, published at the end of the nineteenth century, undermined the individual’s way of thinking of the self by suggesting that a different, perhaps truer, version of themselves was hidden beneath the conscious layers of the mind, accessible in a dream or other uncontrolled .6 The combined effect of these and other cultural changes resulted in feelings of alienation and loss that were channeled through the art of the German Expressionists. It is important to note, however, this phenomenon not only produced changes in art, but also music, literature, poetry, and film.

In 1905 young architectural students of Dresden’s Technische Hochschule

(Technical University) founded the artist group die Brücke (the Bridge), which was the first group to address the needs of early twentieth-century society and to produce artistic

5 Carl Zigrosser, The Expressionists: A Survey of Their Graphic Art, (New York: Braziller, 1957), 8-9. 6 H. W Chase, Freud’s Theories of The Unconscious, (The North Carolina High School Bulletin 2, no. 3, 1911), 110-21. 5 forms that marked a clear direction away from academic tradition and towards a new art form.7 Co-Founder of die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, provided the theoretical underpinnings in his first manifesto of 1906, stating,

With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth. As youth, we carry the future, and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long-established older forces. We claim as our own everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity.8

Kirchner distinctly stated the movement was a youth movement that would overthrow the older forces of society. He ultimately expressed the Brücke artists’ desire for a “direct and genuine” approach to representation.9 In the Brücke title vignette (Figure 2 & 3), a bridge is used to represent the group’s aspiration to create a community based on the and Crafts ideal of a “brotherhood”, that promotes a shared vision of collaborative working relationships. A bridge fills the gap between old artistic forms and new social needs.

The die Brücke artists, especially Kirchner, had a deep admiration for woodcut artists from Germany’s past, especially the sixteenth-century master, Albrecht Dürer. The woodcut, as an art form, provided the bridge between old and new Germany. Woodcuts were an important part of German history, both in the sense of art and literature. The first mass-produced , The Chronicle, (Liber Chronicarum), a world history compiled by Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), was printed in the workshop of Dürer’s

7 The other notable group being , which was in commission from 1911 to 1914. 8 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Manifesto, 1906, n.p. 9 B. Altshuler, Everything is Illuminated, (Tate etc, Spring 2011), 104-107. 6 godfather, Michael Wolgemut. First printed in 1493, the book contained over 1800 woodcut illustrations and was considered a technical masterpiece.10 Dürer was an apprentice in Wolgemut’s shop during the production of the book. The Nuremberg

Chronicle was produced and purchased in such numbers and known as such a marvel of both and , that it must have been of interest to German artists, including die Brücke.11 One wonders if Kirchner might have been inspired by this text in naming his own later writing, Chronik Der Brücke.

The group’s second interest was in non-western art, especially the sculpture of

African and Oceanic peoples of the South Seas. They would have had access to these objects through the Dresden Museum of Ethnology, which opened in 1875.12 Their interest was predicated on the belief that these were “truthful” unsophisticated forms of art, uncorrupted by modern bourgeois culture.13 They based some of the forms in their woodcuts on the shapes and cuts they found in the sculptures in the ethnographic museum. This allowed them to use the woodcut in a way that had never been used before, and they developed a technique which would characterize Expressionism for years to come.

Kirchner and the other members of die Brücke found woodcut prints, with their jagged lines, flattened forms, and stark tonal contrasts an unparalleled medium for their most dramatic work. In my thesis, I will argue that the woodcut as used by the artists in

10 The , (World Digital Library. July, 2015), https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4108/. 11 Hartmann Schedel. n.d. Liber Chronicarum 1493 Facsimile - Nuremberg Chronicle (Latin Edition). 12 L. D. Ettlinger, “German Expressionism and Primitive Art,” The Burlington Magazine, 110, no. 781, (1968), 191-201. 13 Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, and Gillian Perry, Primitivism, , Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, (New Haven: Yale University Press, in Association with the Open University, 1993), 66.

7 die Brücke, primarily Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, was both a physical and emotional release, a critical reflection of social mores, and a bridge to Germany’s past art forms.

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Chapter 1: Literature Review

During the one hundred plus years since die Brücke disbanded, scholars have varied in their opinions and comments on the importance of woodcut prints to die

Brücke. In die Brücke’s active years, journals played a central role in documenting their work and bringing them to the attention of the European art world. Journals built audiences for the new art and defined the scope of the movement. They also gave a closer look into the artists’ personal lives and techniques in producing their art. Publications such as Herwarth Walden’s Wochenschrift für Kultur und Künste, and

Marées-Gesellschaft’s Ganymed, commonly reviewed a mix of art and literature, while others, like ’s , were more political.

Herwarth Walden, founder and editor of Der Sturm, embraced die Brücke’s sense of breaking from old academic tradition to establish a new and expressive form of a . He once stated, “I have never been mistaken in my artistic judgments… in any field." Walden planned and executed Der Sturm to be a ‘force that would sweep away the old culture.’14 Prior to World War I, Walden focused on Expressionism, especially the artists of the die Brücke.15 Although die Brücke was organized in 1905, it was only later they received attention from the art press. In August of 1911, Kirchner’s woodcut of female dancers was the title page image from the periodical Der Sturm.

Wochenschrift für Kultur und Künste, vol. 2, no. 71.16 This woodcut represented

14 Heather Hess, German Expressionist Digital Archive Project, (German Expressionism: Works from the Collection, 2011). 15 Der Blaue Reiter was an artistic group that rejected Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich. The group formed in 1911. 16 Varieté (in-text plate, title page) from the periodical Der Sturm. Wochenschrift für Kultur und Künste, vol. 2, no. 71 (Aug 1911). 9

Kirchner’s ability to express the needs and attitudes of a certain part of society while expressing himself within the print.

Jill Lloyd has written some of the most important scholarship regarding

Expressionism and die Brücke, including German Expressionism: Primitivism and

Modernity, which explores the forces that shaped the movement in the years prior to

World War I. Her work focuses on the political and social environment of early twentieth-century Germany, and how that affected the artists during the era.17 Lloyd’s most impactful work, co-authored with Magdalena Moeller, Director of the Brücke

Museum in Berlin, was an exhibition catalog for the 2003 Kirchner exhibition at

London’s Royal Academy of the Arts, titled Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: The Dresden and

Berlin Years. The catalog was the first substantial publication on Kirchner in English for more than thirty years. In the catalog, Lloyd and Moeller focus on Kirchner’s work from

1905-1915, when he was most responsive to the underlying tension between nature and civilization that fascinated his generation of artists.18

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Peter Schlemihl’s Wonderous Story, 1915, written in

2014 by Magdalena Moeller and Günther Gercken includes the German story of Peter

Schlemihl, who sells his shadow to the devil. The book includes reproductions of the woodcuts Kirchner did for this story, with a detailed comprehensive study of each print.

This is one of few dedicated to the study of Kirchner’s woodcuts with essays on his technique, his pictorial vocabulary, and the ways in which woodcuts contributed to the artist’s development. The original book of woodcuts was completed in a sanatorium

17 Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and , (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1991). 18Jill Lloyd, and Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the Dresden and Berlin years, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2003). 10 near Frankfurt.19 Ultimately, the book talks about how Kirchner sought to revitalize

German woodcuts.

Another notable scholar was Norbert Wolf, and in his 2015 book, Expressionism, he primarily focused on European art of the first two decades of the 20th century, when many artists, especially the Expressionists were experimenting with nonrepresentational forms.20 Other work by William Rubin, Robin Reisenfeld, George Simmel, and R. Held, created the historical context and written history needed for such theoretical work explored in this thesis. Carl Zigrosser, writer of The Expressionists, offered the earliest examples of Expressionistic technique found in works by Goya and Cranach.21 When it comes to the woodcut, however, two that have made major leaps in understanding

Brücke artists and their use of the medium are Peter Selz’s commentary on Kirchner’s

Chronik Der Brücke, nad in 1950, Robin Reisenfeld’s “Cultural Nationalism, Brücke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity.”

Chronik Der Brücke was written by Kirchner in 1913. Selz provides an English translation of the Chronicle and offers a brief history of die Brücke. It also describes each member’s artistic specialty, noting that Kirchner’s was that of the woodcut. Selz may have been among the first scholars to recognize the importance of German woodcuts to die Brücke and to see the Chronicle as Kirchner’s statement on woodcuts.

He makes an important note emphasizing the artistic goals and thoughts of the artists after moving to Berlin in the group’s first few years:

19 Magdalena Moeller and Günther Gercken, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story, (Munich: Prestel, 2014). 20 Norbert Wolf and Uta Grosenick, Expressionism, 2015. 21 Carl Zigrosser, The Expressionists: A Survey of Their Graphic Art, (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957). 11

Brücke has retained its intrinsic character. From its internal coherence, it radiates the new values of artistic creation to the modern artistic production throughout Germany. Uninfluenced by contemporary movements of cubism, , etc., it fights for human culture, the soil of all real art.22

As Selz describes, Kirchner pointed out in the Chronicle that he found inspiration in

Medieval German woodcuts, African and South Sea sculpture, Etruscan art, and many other primitive manifestations.23 More recent work points to the falsification of

Kirchner’s Chronik Der Brücke. In Robin Reisenfeld’s work on Cultural Nationalism, she criticized some of the misleading and falsified statements made by Kirchner in the

Chronicle, such as dates and events that Kirchner altered. Reisenfeld argued that scholars have failed to recognize the impact of the revival of the medieval woodcut upon the group’s maturation. She employed the use of the woodcut medium to link art history to the larger project of the ‘invented nature’ of German Expressionism, and the way visual imagery fostered and keeps a sense of national sentiment, collective identity, and community. She can do this by identifying Brücke artist’s early influences in Jugendstil (young style) sources, establishing a link between Brücke and the German artistic tradition while upon the woodcut’s ideological associations of spiritual and national renewal. Scholars commonly point to ‘primitivism’ as an influence that brought Brücke to their avant-garde style, but Reisenfeld argued that there was significance in the woodcut medium in the formation of the group’s collective identity

22 Peter Selz, “E. L. Kirchner's ‘Chronik Der Brücke’,” (College Art Journal 10, no. 1, 1950), 50-54. doi:10.2307/772368. 23 Peter Selz, 50-54. 12 and mature style of painting.24 I agree with Reisenfeld’s discovery of errors in

Kirchner’s Chronik Der Brücke, and her arguments of the woodcut playing a central role of the group’s nationalistic identity.

A more recent publication was a book by Wolfgang Henze, Lucius Grisebach,

Thomas Roske, Thorten Sadowsky, and Katharina Beisiegel called Ernst Ludwig

Kircher: Imaginary Travels. This book approaches Kirchner’s art in a way that searches for his primal inspiration with art that is untouched by modern life. It provides a deeper understanding of the “primitive” and how primitive objects impacted his life in Davos,

Switzerland. The scholars provide material from primary sources, including letters, prints, textiles, and carvings.25

24 Robin Reisenfeld, “Cultural Nationalism, Brücke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity,” Art History, 20, no. 2, (June 1997), 289–312. 25 Wolfgang Henze, Lucius Grisebach, Thomas Roske, Thorten Sadowsky, and Katharina Beisiegel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Imaginary Travels, (Munich: Prestel, 2019).

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Chapter 2: The Formation of Die Brücke and Their use of the Woodcut

In the early 1900s, Dresden progressed beyond traditional modes of representation. In 1893 Dresden artists with Carl Bantzer as their leader, seceded from the Dresden Art Academy. The Dresden Secession joined a group of landscape painters who created atmospheric landscapes in an area near Dresden called Goppeln, from which the group took its name. The Secession ended abruptly in 1900-1901 when Bantzer received a position at the Academy. Goppeln continued to attract artists, first German

Impressionists and later the generation that rejected the Impressionist’s work, one of whom was Kirchner, who visited the city in 1907.

Dresden became a progressive city of and equally modern attitudes. Institutions in Dresden had connections to the Deutscher Werkbund (German

Association of Craftsmen) and supported Dresden’s own Deutsche Werkstätten, a furniture company with progressive ideas about training and housing workers. Dresden was also a city of the arts, home to both the Dresden Fine Arts Academy and the Dresden

Technical University that trained engineers and architects.26 Within this progressive and artistic city, die Brücke formed at the Dresden Technical University.

In 1901, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and met at Dresden’s Technical

University in a geometry class which both were required to take as architectural students.27 The second half of the group was forming in Chemnitz, where and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff met as high school students. Between 1903 and 1904, under pressure from their families, both men enrolled at Dresden’s Technical University. Soon

26 Ulrike Lorenz, Norbert Wolf, and Michael Scuffil, “The German ‘Wild Beasts’ and the Birth of Expressionism,” (In Brücke, Köln: Taschen, 2016), 6-31. 27 Kirchner and Bleyl were born in 1880. 14 after enrollment, Heckel was introduced to Kirchner and Bleyl through family connections.28 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff joined soon after, finalizing the four founding members of die Brücke.

On June 7, 1905, the four friends officially created the group die Brücke.

Schmidt-Rottluff and Heckel each attribute the name to the other but they agree that the word was meant to describe a “bridge” between the past and present. From the past, they chose to renew Germany’s rich artistic history, which included woodcut prints as developed by Albrecht Dürer, mixed with color experts such as Henri Matisse and

Vincent van Gogh. Both men were interested in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and may have found the bridge was a fitting metaphor for the group’s desire to renew such old mediums.29 In an interview several years later, Heckle recalled that “it was a many- sided word that did not signify any programme but, so to speak, led from one bank to another.” 30 The bridge idea was also inspired by the Jugendstil, a German version of Art

Nouveau, which was characterized by floral motifs and abstracted ornamental shapes. Art

Nouveau also called youth to create and form a more natural representation of art.

The group’s interests also came from the Dresden Museum of Ethnology. These collections gave them access and ultimately vision for a “truthful” unsophisticated form of art, uncorrupted by modern bourgeois culture.31 The decorative motifs in the drapes

28 Peter Selz, “E. L. Kirchner’s Chronik Der Brücke,” (College Art Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, Autumn, 1950), 50. 29 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a Book for All and None, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 43-44, Quoted in Kate Kangaslahti, “Who Put the in the Woodcut”. 30Victor H Miesel, Die Brücke: In the Voices of German Expressionism, (Millbank, London: Tate Publishing, 1961), 13. 31 Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, and Gillian Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, (New Haven: Yale University Press, in Association with the Open University, 1993), 65-66. 15 and background of Kirchner’s Bathers in a Room, c. 1920 (Figure 4) and the Standing

Nude With Hat c. 1910 (Figure 5) are influenced by African and Oceanic objects that were available in the Dresden Ethnographical Museum, including carved and painted house beams from the Palau Islands, a German colony in the South Seas.32 Such references would have been recognized by contemporary audiences as an indication of the woodcut’s “modern” qualities, and of the explicit association of Kirchner’s work with artifacts deemed to be the product of authentic expression. Karl Woermann who published the first global book in 1900, paid close attention to the work of

Africans or South Sea Islanders and included their art and artifacts. Although he used the word ‘primitive’ it had flexible connotations. Woermann’s book was passed out to every student at Dresden’s Technical University during the years die Brücke members attended.

Woermann was also the director of the art gallery and at the Technical

University.33 In addition to that, as students of the University, they would have been familiar with two books that paid tribute to particular qualities of “primitivism” which they exploited. Those two books were Gottfried Semper’s, Der Stil (first edition 1860-3, second edition 1878-9) and Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament (1856).34 Jill Lloyd and

Magdalena Moeller established an interesting connection with Heckel’s brother,

Manfred, who worked as an engineer in German East Africa and visited in the summer of

1910. He brought gifts from Africa for his brother and friends. This gave members of die

Brücke tangible art from some of the cultures they viewed in books and Dresden’s

32 Joan Weinstein, “German Expressionism, Primitivism, and Modernity by Jill Lloyd” Review Article, The Art Bulletin 75, no. 1 (1993): 183-87. doi:10.2307/3045940. 33 L. D. Ettlinger. “German Expressionism and Primitive Art,” The Burlington Magazine, 110, no. 781, (1968), 191-201. http://www.jstor.org/stable/875584. 34 L. D. Ettlinger, 192. 16

Ethnographic Museum. Some of the objects given to the group can be seen in studio photographs. By December of 1910, Kirchner obtained a leopard stool from Cameroon.35

The motifs and stylistic approach which characterized these influences can be easily seen in the groups use of the woodcut medium that was introduced to the group by Kirchner in its earliest days.

In both their social activities and in their painted and graphic work, die Brücke set about critiquing contemporary bourgeois sexual mores and a revaluation of “primitive” sources and lifestyles. Their first exhibition, which occurred in 1906, explored the female nude, a common subject of the group in its formal years. This was one of the ways they disrespected the social mores of the bourgeois class. In multiple photographs produced by

Kirchner himself, it was not uncommon to see the group expressing a sense of freedom when it came to depicting nudity. It was not unusual to see not only the models naked, but also the artists themselves. “Regularly once a week we met, to start with at Kirchner’s place. The desire from life was realized and executed on the spot, not in the traditional academic manner but as a ‘fifteen-minute-nude’,” recalled Bleyl.36 In 1909, Kirchner produced the woodcut print titled, Nude Dancers (Nackte Tänzerinnen) (Figure 6), featuring a group of voluptuous nude female dancers on a stage. The print has an energetic spirit reflecting the freedom the studio provided. Kirchner created expressive, dynamic black lines by aggressively carving into the woodblock. The balance between the two extremes, light and dark, allow for a contrasting bold and delicate composition.

Kirchner’s line work suggests his interest in the woodcut, but also the Oceanic and

African influences he and his comrades so often depict in the development of form.

35 Lloyd and Moeller, 46. 36 Lorenz Ulrike, Norbert Wolf, Brücke. (Köln: Taschen, 2016), 13-15. 17

Kirchner’s conscious effort to leave the lines unrefined to reveal the qualities and imperfections of the tool was a rejection of academic teaching, a philosophy the members of die Brücke emphasized throughout their career.

Kirchner may have been the most dedicated die Brücke artist to the project of reviving the German woodcut tradition. This most likely was due to his pride in being

German, his interest in sixteenth-century German prints masters like Albrecht Durer and

Lucas Cranach the Elder, the importance of wood and forests in the German psyche, and lastly because of the physical and tactile qualities involved in the process of creating woodcut prints.

On occasion, Kirchner’s work was recognized as influenced by French artistry.

This annoyed Kirchner, which can be seen in a 1936 letter while living in , which he insisted, “My work is German, even if these days the gentleman over there do not see it that way, and not French as it is so often accused of being.”37 On the 7 of July

1924, Kirchner had been even more explicit regarding his German nature. In a letter to his patron Georg Reinhart, he wrote, “I was very interested that you feel my work is

German. I am very glad about this, because I have always thought that my origins, not being German… came out in my art in the same way… Being German is certainly not something to be confined by political boundaries.”38 Magdalena Moeller, Director of the

Brücke Museum in Berlin, described Kirchner’s essential German character as part of an inheritance from a German past: “Instinct, emotion, and personal feeling found their way

37 Kirchner to Louise Schieffler, quoted in Magdalena M. Moeller, “Kirchner as a German Artist,” in Lloyd and Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the Dresden and Berlin Years, 24. 38 Lloyd and Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the Dresden and Berlin Years, 24. 18 into his (Kirchner’s) works of art as a subjective way of defining reality; in the picture, etc.”39

Prior to the formation of die Brücke, in 1903, Kirchner traveled to Nuremberg where he studied prints by Dürer and took special interest to the process in which a woodcut is made. Although his prints do not share the same level of sophistication that

Dürer mastered, Kirchner did absorb the lessons of internal modeling, which lessens the power of contouring, matching the painterly qualities that can be achieved with richly contrasting values. A woodcut print, created in 1906, called Shed on the Bank of the Elbe

(Figure 7), is a perfect example demonstrating bold line work that contours the image to give it a painterly quality. This print is also an example of Kirchner’s use of the imperfections of the wood to express texture and form.

Brücke artists used the woodcut in a way that had never been used before, and they developed a technique which would characterize expressionism for years to come.

Brücke artists attempted to form a connection between art and life. The woodcut is more than an artistic medium, it is a technique which requires the physical act of cutting a block, or, to reprise Dietrich’s terms, ‘the slice of a knife’. Dietrich equated the wood of a tree and the flesh of a man. The sacrifice that the woodcut demands are only partial.

Intrinsic to its final creation is an act of force, a physical penetration of the wood: the artist’s expression is both literal and figurative. The tree’s flesh and human flesh are tied,

“Truly flesh of thy flesh.”40 Die Brücke members revived the woodcut as an artistic venture by which the physicality of the artist is involved. For Die Brücke artists, as well

39 Lloyd and Moeller, 24. 40 Kate Kangaslahti, “Who Put the Wood/s in the Woodcut?’ Visions of the Forest in the Wood-Work of Die Brücke and Jalan Jati,” Jalan Jati, Teak Road, (Edinburgh: The Royal Botanic Garden/Migrant Ecologies Project, 2013), 61-80. 19 as most German Expressionists, the process of the woodcut was start to finish. The artist was the designer, cutter, and printer. This allowed Expressionists to change the role of art and artist from two separate entities into one. The artist is very much part of the art itself, which allowed art to no longer be imitation of nature but to be an expression of the authentic vision of the artists' personal experiences. As outlined in the Manifesto of 1906, the medium of wood provided a release of energy from the artist. The resistance of the wood encouraged simplified forms. After being influenced by the techniques of both

Gauguin and Munch, from 1907 onward the artists’ work became less chiseled and more roughly carved and produced. The use of the grain in the wood became an important quality in the overall design composition by most of the artists. “Nowhere,” Kirchner wrote, “does one come to know an artist better than in his prints.” The knife’s cut revealed the innermost self.41

Only three members would be added to the original four; they were and in 1906, and in 1910. There were many additional

‘passive members’ who would show with the group in its existence.42 In total, the members of die Brücke showed in over 70 exhibitions together and countless more individually. All of the exhibitions were voted upon by the members. After eight years of exponential success, the group was betrayed by one of its own. In 1913 the group’s leader, Kirchner, wrote the Chronik der Brücke, which was meant to highlight the group’s work and legacy. Unfortunately, the Chronicle did not represent each of its members in the way many of them had hoped.43 The artists believed Kirchner represented

41 Kate Kangaslahti. 6-12. 42 Ulrike Lorenz. 11-14. 43 Robin Reisenfeld, “Cultural Nationalism, Brucke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity,” Art History, 20, no. 2, (June 1997), 289–312. 20 himself with all the glory, and this, along with artistic disagreement and social pressure, dissolved the group. This most likely would have happened later even if it didn’t happen then due to World War I which drafted almost all the Brücke members to the military.

Although die Brücke didn’t survive the First World War, the heightened emotionalism, rejection of tradition, and search for non-academic sources that characterized

Expressionism continued to shape German art between the World Wars.

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Chapter 3: Post World War I, Kirchner’s Use of the Woodcut

During and after World War I, artists from the dissolved group die Brücke continued their journey as masters of Expressionism. This journey, however, was drastically different than what they had experienced prior to the war. Before the war, their work commonly portrayed attitudes of modern German society, heavily influenced by the political and social environment surrounding them. After experiencing the traumatic events of the war, artists’ focus changed to reflect such profound experiences.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, once the leader of die Brücke, experienced both physical and mental trauma during the war. Kirchner, “an unwilling volunteer,” was assigned artillery training at Halle. After suffering a physical breakdown, he was discharged from the military in 1914 and spent several years in sanatoriums attempting to regain his health.44 The war also had a profound impact on his mental state, as it had on so many of his artistic comrades. Kirchner was diagnosed with anxiety, labeled as Shaky Hand

Syndrome. It made him unable to paint.45 As he learned to use his hands again, he returned to the woodcut to depict his trauma. Although scholars, like Reisenfeld, believe that the woodcut was used as a way of creating a new art form and a sense of nationalism for the artistic community as a whole,46 there is evidence to suggest that the woodcut allowed Kirchner both a physical and emotional release. It was not just the striking visual compositions, it was the process of carving into the wood that had therapeutic value for

Kirchner. The process of slicing, gouging, and cutting gave the artist an emotional outlet

44Carl Zigrosser, 12-14. 45 Jill Lloyd, and Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the Dresden and Berlin Years, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2003), 27-31. 46 Robin Reisenfeld, “Cultural Nationalism, Brucke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity,” Art History, 20, no. 2, (June 1997), 301. 22 while the physical effort of the carving strengthened his hands. As Kirchner wrote, the very act of cutting the block brought the artist closer to an original, natural state: “Just as a ‘savage’ with infinite patience, carved from hardwood a figure that embodies his longing, so the artist creates perhaps the purest and most powerful works by a laborious technical means, following the primordial curse, so to speak: from the sweat of thou brow shall thou earn thy bread.”47

In 1917 Kirchner began to travel between Davos in neutral Switzerland and

Germany. He made this trip frequently over the span of nine years. In the late 1920s, he and his longtime partner, Erna Shilling, settled permanently in Davos.48 Kirchner found the peasant life and nearness of nature calming, and that brought him mental stability.

From the time die Brücke disbanded and Kirchner moved to the Swiss Alps, he experienced a time of maturation. His artwork still presented strong German

Expressionist style through radical coloring and bold, provocative line work. A 1921 woodcut print, Alte und Junge Frau (Figure 8), held in the Albion College Print

Collection marks Kirchner’s transition to his mature style with its embrace of peasant life, decorative pattern, and articulated interior spaces.

The woodcut print was published in Scheffler, G. Die Graphik Euphorion Vol. I in 1925 and Vol. II in 1926. Acquired in 1951 for the Albion College Print Collection, the image is printed on cream wove , with no watermark and a stamped signature

“E. L. Kirchner”. The condition of the piece is fair, with a water stain beneath the image and no visible strain. By utilizing bold line work and manipulating perspective, Kirchner

47 Kate Kangaslahti, 8-12. 48 Carl Zigrosser, 12-14. 23 was able to create a composition which emphasizes an interior space which is detailed in design.

The print itself is rectangular. Two women are seated at a table, an elderly woman placed towards the back and a young woman on the viewer’s right side. Their ages can be determined by stress marks on the face and exposed hands of both women. Kirchner used rigid marks and the grain of the wood to express age in the elderly woman. This woman rests her elbows on the table in front of her, folding her hands over one another. The woman also appears to be looking out towards the viewer’s right side. The younger woman faces the elderly woman and stares towards her. Her left hand is lightly placed on the table, while her right hand disappears beneath the table. Both women are dressed conservatively, with a lack of naked skin on view. The dresses both are wearing appear to be casual, not to mark any specific event. Upon the table are a pair of scissors, what may be a photo book, and a glass bowl of some sort. Except for the legs and backing of the chair, the elderly woman takes up most of the seating space. The young woman sits in an elongated chair, which has detailed ornamental design on the side.

The space is shallow; however, bold negative space created by deep cuts in the wood, creates a larger than life atmosphere in the print. The organic shapes of the women contrast with the straight lines and geometric forms of the background. Elements in the print, such as the sharp cuts that comprise the hand and the visible splintered wood around the elderly woman’s face appear painful. The windows aren’t straight; the table is in reverse perspective, its shape appearing to increase in width as it moves closer to the old woman, automatically draw our eyes to her. As the focal point of the print, the elderly woman is substantially larger than her younger counterpart. The windows appear to have

24 platforms, which lead to a perspective in which the two figures are inside an enclosed space. The window on the right has curved lines, representing a tree outside. The other window includes triangular shapes in the upper third and horizontal lines and shapes in the lower two panels. The higher triangles may represent the mountainous landscape of

Davos or it may be a short decorative curtain. The lower lines and shapes may reflect the surface of the window panes.

This woodcut has intense light and dark values. The positive, uncut (and thus printed) space appears to dominate in this print, allowing the negative, cut space of the table to be brightly displayed. Since the bodies of the two women are in positive space, they appear to blend with the background, except for the windows, which are displayed in negative space to show light. This work is one of many Kirchner produced during his

Davos years that has been preserved.

This piece evokes emotion and expresses strong personality, like die Brücke’s overall embrace of energy and vitality. It maintains the bold line work and simplified form that characterized Kirchner’s earlier work, but also introduces a more mature conceptualization of narrative and space. Utilizing University of Michigan’s Museum of

Art, specifically that of their print collection, I was able to conclude that a Kirchner drawing held in the museum’s collection, was a preliminary study for the print owned by

Albion College. The drawing titled, In the Studio (Erna and Guest) (Figure 9), was dated to between 1912 and 1913. After comparisons and analysis, I believe that the drawing was produced during the time Kirchner lived in Davos, Switzerland, between 1917 and the late 1920s, and therefore should be re-dated to a later date, probably closer to 1918-

1919. Similarities between the two works is clear. There is similar compositional

25 structure, ornamental accents, and depth perception. The print is much more detailed, but is a clear final representation of the drawing. The connection between the drawing and the print offered more clues about what this print symbolizes. I believe the old woman is giving advice to the young woman, a common practice in Davos where old wise women would travel around giving advice to the younger generations. For Kirchner, this print highlighted his appreciation for the people of Davos and is a much more centered and subdued work compared to most. Over the next several years, Kirchner created hundreds of prints based on his life in the Swiss Alps and past experiences. This deduction was rare in that it is unlikely that two related pieces would be in such proximity and that someone with the appropriate expertise in Kirchner’s early Davos work would find them and recognize their significance. It is equally unlikely and incredibly fortunate that both pieces survived the events of the in Germany.

26

Conclusion

In January of 1937, W. R. Valentiner organized Kirchner’s first show in the

United States, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. At the same point in time, Adolf Hitler declared all Expressionists as degenerates and ordered SA troops to confiscate their work from Museums and private collections around the nation. Six-hundred-thirty-nine works by Kirchner were confiscated. Thirty-two of them were shown in the Entartete Kunst

(Degenerate Art) Exhibition of 1937 (Figure 10). The Degenerate Art Exhibition was created to mock Expressionists.49 The Degenerate Art Exhibition was one of the most popular exhibitions in the world with over ten million visitors. All members of die

Brücke were impacted by the showing, some of whom had more items confiscated than

Kirchner. History commonly marks the 1937 exhibition as the end of German

Expressionism. That is simply not true. Surviving members of the original Expressionist groups continued to make art and exhibit in Europe and the United States. Artists of the next generation joined them in keeping this vibrant movement alive. German

Expressionism was a catalyst for modern art to thrive within Europe and around the world. The woodcut that characterized much of die Brücke’s work, especially that of

Kirchner, was a medium that provided artists with both a physical and emotional release, a critical reflection of social mores, and a bridge to Germany’s past.

49Reinhold Heller, Brücke: German Expressionist Prints from the Granvil and Marcia Specks collection, (Evanston, Il: The Gallery, 1988). 27

Figures

Figure 1 Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893 Oil, Tempera and Pastel on Cardboard The National Gallery in Oslo, Norway. Image Courtesy of www.EdvardMunch.org

28

Figure 2 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Manifesto of 1906 Woodcut Museum of Modern Art, NYC (Front) Image Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

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Figure 3 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Manifesto of 1906 Woodcut Museum of Modern Art, NYC (Back) Image Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

30

Figure 4 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bathers in a Room, 1909 repainted in 1920 Oil on Canvas Unknown Location Courtesy of www.TheArtStory.org

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Figure 5 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Standing Nude with Hat, 1910 Oil on Canvas Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany Courtesy of Google Arts & Culture

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Figure 6 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nude Dancers (Nackte Tänzerinnen), 1909 Woodcut print Museum of Modern Art, New York Image Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

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Figure 7 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Shed on the Bank of the Elbe, 1906 Woodcut , Washington, D.C. Image Courtesy of NGA

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Figure 8 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alte und Junge Frau, 1921 Woodcut Albion College Print Collection Sean Barlett Photo

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Figure 9 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, In the Studio (Erna and Guest) c. 1918F-1921 Graphite on Paper University of Michigan Museum of Art Image Courtesy of UMMA

36

Figure 10 People queueing for the Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) exhibition in Munich, which opened on July 19, 1937. Museum of Modern Art, NYC © The Image Works

37

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