ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER German, 1880-1938

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German Expressionist artist known for his paintings and prints. Using lively brushwork, stylized forms, and vivid colors, he depicted portraits, landscapes, and city scenes as seen in his seminal painting Street, Dresden (1908). “A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness,” he mused. “In fact he creates new appearances of things.” Born on May 6, 1880 in Aschaffenburg, Germany, he studied architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule in Dresden before turning painting. Finding inspiration in the works of earlier German artists such as Albrecht Dürer, he was profoundly influenced by the expressive use of color in the work of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch. Like the French avant-garde, Kirchner incorporated aesthetic attributes of traditional African and Oceanic art into his developing style. In 1905, he helped to found the Die Brücke group, along with Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Erich Heckel. This group acted as a collaborative workspace in Dresden where he and his colleagues led a bohemian lifestyle which included nudity, polyamorous relationships, and a reverence for freedom. Plagued by troubled mental health throughout his life, Kirchner committed suicide on June 15, 1938 in Frauenkirch, Switzerland. Today, his works are included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, and the Albertina in Vienna, among others.