Edited by Jill Lloyd and Janis Staggs

With preface by Ronald S. Lauder, foreword by Renée Price, and contributions by Nelson Blitz, Jr., Sharon Jordan, Jill Lloyd, Sherwin Simmons, and Janis Staggs

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is arguably the most outstanding German Expressionist artist of the early twentieth century. This publication and its related exhibition pay tribute to Kirchner’s inventive genius with a focus on his highly individual approach to color, which he viewed as the fundamental building block to his paintings. Yet Kirchner was a multi-talented figure and his work encompassed various media – painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, and even the decorative arts. Rather than accepting the traditional hierarchy that placed fine art solely at the pinnacle of an artist’s achievement, Kirchner compared his activity in these various fields to “a tightly woven, organic fabric, in which process and completion go hand in hand and one aspect drives the other on.”

Beginning with his Dresden years as a founding member of the artists’ group Brücke, and moving on to the periods he spent in the Berlin metropolis and in the Swiss mountainside resort of Davos, this survey provides a representative overview of Kirchner’s three main phases and charts the transformation in his life’s output.

The essays touch on important topics related to his entire career. Jill Lloyd provides an overview and examines how color and technique were crucial, evolving elements throughout his work. Janis Staggs offers new insights into Kirchner’s decorative projects, paying particular attention to his little-known metalwork and its close connection with his work in other media. Sherwin Simmons confronts Kirchner's modernity by relating the color compositions in his Berlin street scenes to the impact of electric light. Sharon Jordan analyzes Kirchner’s colored woodcut series “Peter Schlemihl’s Wondrous Story” in relation to his long-abiding interest in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. And Nelson Blitz, Jr., provides an original interpretation of Kirchner’s breakdown and suicide by situating the artist’s personal story in its historical and political context.

Hardcover
262 pages
80 color illustrations, 100 b/w illustrations
23.5 x 28.5 cm
Prestel, 2019
ISBN 9783791359342
Neue Galerie Exhibition Catalogue, Art History, Essays