What Artist Used Traditional Woodcut Printing to Create Art With Modern Subject Matter?

"A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things."

1 of half-dozen

"My paintings are allegories not portraits."

2 of 6

"The heaviest burden of all is the pressure of the war and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival. I feel equally though the effect is in the air and everything is topsy-turvy.. All the same, I proceed on trying to get some lodge in my thoughts and to create a picture show of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function."

three of half-dozen

"It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to deliquesce myself completely into the sensations of the surround in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form."

4 of half dozen

"All art needs this visible globe and will always demand it. Quite simply because, being accessible to all, information technology is the key to all other worlds."

5 of 6

"driven by a totally naive, pure need to bring art and life into harmony with each other."

Summary of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a driving forcefulness in the Die Brücke grouping that flourished in Dresden and Berlin earlier World War I, and he has come up to be seen as ane of the most talented and influential of Federal republic of germany'southward Expressionists. Motivated past the aforementioned anxieties that gripped the motion every bit a whole - fears nigh humanity'south identify in the mod world, its lost feelings of spirituality and actuality - Kirchner had conflicting attitudes to the past and present. An gentleman of Albrecht Dürer, he revived the old art of woodblock press, and saw himself in the German tradition, notwithstanding he rejected academic styles and was inspired by the mod metropolis. After the war, affliction drove him to settle in Davos, Switzerland, where he painted many landscapes, and, ultimately, he establish himself ostracized from mainstream German fine art. When the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s he was as well a victim of their campaign against "Degenerate Fine art." Depressed and ill, he eventually committed suicide.

Accomplishments

The man figure was primal to Kirchner's art. Information technology was vital to the pictures that took his studio as their properties - pictures in which he captured models posing as well every bit aspects of his maverick life. For Kirchner, the studio was an important nexus where art and life met. Merely the figure also informed his images of Berlin, in which the demeanor of figures in the street ofttimes seemed more important than the surrounding cityscape. And, virtually unremarkably, he depicted the figure in movement, since he believed that this better expressed the fullness and vitality of the homo body.
Kirchner'south Expressionistic handling of paint represented a powerful reaction confronting the Impressionism that was dominant in High german painting when he first emerged. For him, it marked a reaction against the staid civility of bourgeois life. He would always deny that he was influenced by other artists, yet Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch were clearly important in shaping his style. Fauvism was especially significant in directing his palette, encouraging him to use flat areas of unbroken, oftentimes unmixed color and simplified forms.
Kirchner believed that powerful forces - enlivening still too destructive - dwelt beneath the veneer of Western civilization, and he believed that inventiveness offered a means of harnessing them. This outlook shaped the mode in which he depicted men and women in his pictures, equally people who often seem at war with themselves or their environs. It likewise encouraged his involvement in Primitivism, in particular that of the Pacific Islands, for he considered that this piece of work offered a more straight moving picture of those elemental energies. Archaic art was besides important in directing Kirchner to a more simplified treatment of form. Primitive sculpture undoubtedly inspired his own arroyo to the medium and his love of crude-hewn, partially painted surfaces.

Biography of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born on May 6, 1880 in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, and began studying architecture at the Dresden Technical High School in 1901 at the encouragement of his parents. While attending classes, he became close friends with Fritz Bleyl, who shared his radical outlook on art and nature. During this fourth dimension, Kirchner chose to dedicate himself to fine fine art rather than architecture.

Of import Art by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Progression of Art

1909

Nude Dancers (Nackte Tanzerinnen)

This woodcut impress features a group of voluptuous nude female dancers on stage. Created during the Die Brucke era, the piece of work exemplifies the energetic atmosphere of a coming together in Kirchner's studio, a recurrent scene in his pictures. In an endeavour to revive the traditional printmaking, Kirchner created expressive, dynamic black lines by aggressively etching away the woodblock; the large areas of low-cal and dark create an ambiguous sense of spatial depth on a ii dimensional surface. Kirchner renders a balance between the two extremes (light and dark, bold and fragile) to create a harmonious composition, allowing the eye to sweep across the picture plane. The witting determination to leave white areas unrefined, making the process of carving visible, is a rejection of conventional academic pedagogy, a philosophy typified past Die Brucke.

Woodcut print - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1909-ten

Marzella

Around the time this picture was painted Kirchner was spending time around the Moritzberg lakes, and the girl depicted is the daughter of a circus artiste's widow that he met there. Emblematic of his Die Brucke phase, Marzella is a provocative depiction of a young, pre-pubescent daughter. The youth of the figure coupled with the intense gaze and heavily made-up confront give the appearance of uncanny maturity. Unnatural colors and self-conscious body language add to the unease in the composition. The painting is an example of a technique of rapid sketching used by members of Die Brucke, who believed this process allowed them to capture the "soul" of the bailiwick. The picture is besides indicative of the influence of Edvard Munch on Kirchner's piece of work, since the composition appears to be based on Munch'due south Puberty (1892).

Oil on sheet

1912

Deutsch: Nollendorfplatz

Deutsch: Nollendorfplatz reveals Kirchner'southward shift in subject thing from the female person nude to depictions of the metropolis. Here, the perspective is skewed, a articulate rejection of his previous study of architecture. The quick, gestural utilise of line creates a sense of immediacy and speed inside the piece, capturing the essence of a busy German city. The use of clashing blues and yellows to depict the cityscape is typical of Kirchner's style during the Die Brucke years, though the distorted imagery of the urban center may also take been inspired past an exhibition of Italian Futurist fine art that he saw in the twelvemonth that this was painted.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modernistic Art, New York

1913

Street, Berlin

The vigorously painted Street, Berlin explores the figure of the city prostitute: chic streetwalkers who accept angular, mask-like faces. The two women proudly walk down the decorated, tilted street of cloaked men with more sullen expressions. Street, Berlin accentuates the hidden sensuality beneath the prostitutes' haughty fashion. The luxury and broken-hearted energy in painting also serve as a commentary on a pre-World State of war I High german civilization, equally Kirchner believed increasing political tensions further detached urban individuals from lodge. The Streetwalker series, of which this is a famous example, is one of the virtually admired areas of Kirchner's fine art. The models for the serial may have been dancer Gerda Schilling and her sister Edna, who later became the artist's lover. He once described the two women as having "cute, architecturally structured, rigorously formed bodies", and his run into with them undoubtedly influenced this series of figure paintings.

Oil on sheet - The Museum of Mod Art, New York

1915

Self-Portrait every bit a Soldier

Self-Portrait as a Soldier examines the psychological distress experienced by Kirchner during his service in the military. He was a reluctant soldier and shortly became preoccupied with avoiding service, and following a self-induced psychosis, aided by his use of alcohol and drugs, he was discharged. The painting displays a uniformed Kirchner standing in his studio, smoking a cigarette. His right hand is severed, symbolizing his trauma and perhaps also his anxiety of his loss of manhood; the motif is based on Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear (1889), a picture the artist painted after he too had inflicted injuries upon himself. In the background of Kirchner's moving-picture show stands a nude who bears a resemblance to his lover of the time, Erna Schilling.

Oil on sail - Allen Memorial Art Museum, Ohio

1924

Blick auf Davos

After existence discharged from the armed forces, Kirchner took refuge in Davos, where the Alps surrounding his home provided a new kind of bucolic inspiration. The painting depicts a cool mountain range embracing a small town, a pictorial sigh of relief following the finish of Earth State of war I. Inspired by van Gogh'south landscape paintings and the work of the Fauvists, Kirchner used pulsating shades of violet, blue, green, and xanthous to depict the rural scene. The swooping perspective is similar to Kirchner'southward early paintings of urban life.

Oil on canvas

Similar Art

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced by Artist

Symbolism
Fauvism
Oceanic Art
Buddhist Painting

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Content compiled and written by Larissa Borteh

Edited and published by The Fine art Story Contributors

"Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Larissa Borteh
Edited and published past The Art Story Contributors
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Get-go published on 22 Nov 2011. Updated and modified regularly
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Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kirchner-ernst-ludwig/