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Lot Essay
In the Autumn of 1911, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff moved to Berlin where two members of Die Brücke, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller, were already living. Exposed to the richness and vibrancy of life in the capital city, the individuality of each artist gradually began to emerge out of the collective Brücke model. In Kirchner, this evolution led to the Berlin Strassenszene of 1913-14.
'1913 saw the full realisation of Kirchner's mature artistic power...(his) reaction to the city life remained a mixture of fascination and horror. On one hand he was drawn compulsively towards its seamy night-life of whores, cabaret dancers and circus entertainment, but on the other hand he was overwhelmed by its artificiality and brutishness. This conflict eventually resolved itself in a series of...street scenes, where the artist's extreme state of nervous tension and excitement communicated itself to the spectator in luridly unnatural colours and his edgy use of...brush strokes' (B. Herbert, German Expressionism, London, 1983, p. 83)
In his printed work, this emotional turmoil is communicated by the frenetic, almost angry use of the drypoint needle to delineate the outlines of the street dwellers, and open-bite to create volume. This distorted view of reality is further conveyed by the distorted shape of the printing plate itself.
In his diary of 24 August 1919 Kirchner interpreted his Berlin street scenes as the expression of loneliness and fear:
'Sie sind entstanden in den Jahren 11-14, in einer der einsamsten Zeiten meines Lebens, in der mich die qualvolle Unruhe Tag und Tag immer wieder hinaustrieb, in die langen Strassen voller Menschen und Wagen' (Quoted in Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik, Hatje, Stuttgart, 1990, p. 184)
'1913 saw the full realisation of Kirchner's mature artistic power...(his) reaction to the city life remained a mixture of fascination and horror. On one hand he was drawn compulsively towards its seamy night-life of whores, cabaret dancers and circus entertainment, but on the other hand he was overwhelmed by its artificiality and brutishness. This conflict eventually resolved itself in a series of...street scenes, where the artist's extreme state of nervous tension and excitement communicated itself to the spectator in luridly unnatural colours and his edgy use of...brush strokes' (B. Herbert, German Expressionism, London, 1983, p. 83)
In his printed work, this emotional turmoil is communicated by the frenetic, almost angry use of the drypoint needle to delineate the outlines of the street dwellers, and open-bite to create volume. This distorted view of reality is further conveyed by the distorted shape of the printing plate itself.
In his diary of 24 August 1919 Kirchner interpreted his Berlin street scenes as the expression of loneliness and fear:
'Sie sind entstanden in den Jahren 11-14, in einer der einsamsten Zeiten meines Lebens, in der mich die qualvolle Unruhe Tag und Tag immer wieder hinaustrieb, in die langen Strassen voller Menschen und Wagen' (Quoted in Magdalena M. Moeller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik, Hatje, Stuttgart, 1990, p. 184)