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Last updated: 5-10-08
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938)

Kirchner Lithographs / Kirchner Woodcuts 1 / Kirchner Woodcuts 2

"Käthe Kollwitz and German Expressionism" features over fifty works by Käthe Kollwitz plus additional works by Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Heinrich Campendonck, Marc Chagall, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmuller, Hans Fronius, Georg Grosz, Erich Heckel, Hannah Hoch, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Ludwig Meidner, Edvard Munch, Heinrich Nauen, Emile Nolde, Max Pechstein, Georges Rouault, Rudolf Schlichter, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Siegfried Schott, Georg Tappert, Wilhelm Wagner, and others. (Look for additional images to be added as time permits; all works are available for purchase unless otherwise indicated.)
One of the most important artists of German Expressionism, Kirchner was a founding member of Die Brucke in 1905 (along with Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl; they were soon joined by Emile Nolde and Max Pechstein) and its dominant member for the next five or six years until his criticisms of his fellows alienated him from them and the group dissolved in 1913. In 1910 he settled in Berlin and began a series of paintings based upon the streets of Berlin combining cityscapes and figures. He was drafted in 1915 but suffered a nervous breakdown and was released in 1916. After being hit by a car in Berlin, he underwent a long period of recovery, leaving Berlin and settling in Switzerland. Although there were many retrospectives of his work in Germany during the 1930s, he suffered a crisis after the Nazis included his works in the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition. He shot himself the following year. In The Oxford Dictionary of 20th-Century Art, Ian Chilvers ranks Kirchner as "one of the 20th century's greatest masters" of printmaking, and says that his mature works are distinguished by "a harsh contrast of planes and abrupt angularity influenced by his admiration for medieval German woodcuts" (p. 318). The last 40 years have seen a tremendous critical interest in Kirchner's prints and paintings; his works are to be found in every important museum in Europe and America.

Select Bibliography:
Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: His Graphic Art (Greenwich CT: New York Graphic Society, n.d. [1961]); Lucius Grisebach, Annette Meyer zu Eissen, Ulrich Luckhardt, E. L. Kirchner 1880-1938;Ausst.Katalog Nationalgalerie Berlin 1979 (Berlin: Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1979); Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: A Retrospective Exhibition (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1968); Lucius Grisebach, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880-1938 (Cologne: Taschen, 1999); Roman Norbert Ketterer and Claus Zoege von Manteuffel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Drawings and Pastels (NY: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1982); Kirchner Museum, Davos & Museum Folkwang, Essen, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Das Innere Bild. "Farben sind die Freude des Lebens." Exhibition: 1999-2000 (Cologne: Dumont, 1999); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Ausstellung zum 100. Geburtstag am 6.Mai-29.J uni 1980 (Bremen: Graphisches Kabinett, Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner KG, 1980); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in der Graphischen Sammlung der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1980); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Zeichnungen 1906-1925 (Kassel: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, 1967); Christian Lenz, E. L. Kirchner. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und ausgewählte Druckgraphik (Frankfurt: Städelsches Kunstinstitut, 1974); Magdalena Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik (Berlin: Brucke Museum, 1990); W. R.Valentiner, E. L. Kirchner, German Expressionist (Raleigh: The North Carolina Museum of Art, 1958).
In the barracks' courtyard (Davis-Rifkind 1462, Dube 308 II C). Original lithograph, 1916. Published in Der Bildermann (1916), a German art periodical that commissioned and published original lithographs by a number of Expressionist artists including Barlach, Heckel, and Kokoschka. Signed in the stone. Image size: 268x214mm. Price: SOLD.
In the barracks' courtyard (Davis-Rifkind 1462, Dube 308 C). Original lithograph, 1916. Published in the deluxe edition of 75 numbered exemplars on Butten paper for Der Bildermann (1916), a German art periodical that commissioned and published original lithographs. Signed in the stone and numbered in pencil 28/75 . Image size: 268x214mm. Price: $2250.
Bildniss Carl Sternheims / Portrait of Carl Sternheim (Davis-Rifkind 1464, Dube 328 C). Original lithograph, 1916. Published in the deluxe edition of 75 numbered exemplars on Butten paper for Der Bildermann (1916), a German art periodical that commissioned and published original lithographs. Signed in the stone and numbered in pencil 28/75 . Image size: 300x202mm. Price: $2350.
Landschaft im Taunus (Davis-Rifkind 1468, Dube 315 C). Original lithograph, 1916. Published in the deluxe edition of 75 numbered exemplars on Butten paper for Der Bildermann (1916), a German art periodical that commissioned and published original lithographs. Signed in the stone and numbered in pencil 28/75. Image size: 280x198mm. Price: STOLEN.

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