Art of the 20th Century. Dorothea Eimert

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      In 1911, Heckel, Kirchner, Pechstein and Schmidt-Rottluff moved to Berlin. Each of the artists now went their own way. Der Sturm, the magazine and gallery, belonging to Herwarth Walden, became the place to turn to for the painters. Walden published Kirchner’s woodcuts for the first time. Together with Erich Heckel, Kirchner took part in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. In 1913, Kirchner had his first exhibition at the Folkwang-Museum in Hagen. However, friction and differences of opinion inside the Brücke finally resulted in its dissolution, but the painters remained lifelong friends.

      Before World War I, Berlin developed into the most important centre of culture in Europe alongside Paris, Dresden, and Munich. The prelude to this was the exhibition of Edvard Munch in 1892, which provoked waves of conservative anger. Exhibitions of other contemporaries followed. Progressive art magazines began to appear. Hugo von Tschudi was appointed as director in 1896 to the Nationalgalerie and single-mindedly promoted modernist artists. Bruno Cassirer organised his first Cézanne exhibition in 1901. In 1904, the German Artists’ Association was founded and the next year had its first exhibition of contemporary artists. From 1907 onwards, Fauvism, Expressionism and all the other modernist art movements were represented in a large number of Berlin galleries. The Neue Secession was formed in 1910, and one year later, the Erste juryfreie Kunstaustellung (the First Juryless Art Exhibit).

      A visionary with a deft feeling for the future, Herwarth Walden gathered around himself the decisive creative forces in Der Sturm, the gallery he founded in the early part of 1912. From 1910 onwards, his magazine of the same name was published ‘in order to give artists cast out by the critics and the public a place to create.’ This magazine became the ‘organ of struggle’ of the new movements like Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism and Constructivism. Among the renowned artists and writers who were published in the fourteen volumes of the magazine were Hans Arp, Gottfried Benn, Franz Marc, August Stramm, Alfred Döblin, Fernand Léger, Max Pechstein, Kurt Schwitters, August Strindberg, Tristan Tzara, Guillaume Apollinaire, Umberto Boccioni, Robert Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Filippo Marinetti and Wilhelm Worringer.

      The gallery Der Sturm débuted in March 1912 with the Blaue Reiter and with Oskar Kokoschka followed by the Italian Futurists. Herwarth Walden reserved the summer exhibition for Marc, Münter, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Werefkin, who had been turned down by the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. French graphic art by Herbin, Gauguin and Picasso, as well as the Fauves and the expressive Belgians followed. In Der Sturm, Walden declared, ‘all the artists are exhibited of whom one will later say that they were the driving forces of their times’, and this was a vision that was to be confirmed. The high point of Walden’s exhibitions was to become the Este Deutsche Herbstsalon (First German Fall Salon), a counterpart to the Parisian Salon d’Automne. The Erste Deutsche Herbstalon gathered 366 works by 86 contemporary avant-garde artists from twelve countries, including among others, America, Russia and Spain. Walden, Marc, and Macke organised the Herbstalon together with financial support from the collector and patron, Bernhard Koehler. The public often reacted with indignation to the opening of the Herbstsalon. ‘Here, row upon row, the talentless are on exhibit.’ Franz Marc and the others were called, ‘a horde of paint-squirting loudmouths.’ However, there were some positive exceptions among the critics. ‘The opening day of the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon can be considered to be an historic date. There is something overpowering in seeing everywhere around one the champions and representatives of the new principles at work.’

      The pulsating, almost feverish city life, the intellectual and cultural intensity, and the social contrasts had their influence upon the painting style of the Brücke artists. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, no doubt most towering artistic personality of the Brücke group, was intoxicated by life in the city, and this was reflected in the characteristically nervous eccentricity of his personal style. His depictions of people and street scenes exuded the flair of the glamourous and intense urban life. The structure of his paintings became tighter, edgier, and the forms, more dynamic. The vital energy of the present penetrated the electrically charged surface of the painting with dandies, prostitutes and pedestrians flitting eerily on their way. The futuristic technique of lining people up as if in a street scene and thereby producing the impression of continuously locomotive people fascinated Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the years 1912 to 1914. A relaxed brushstroke blurs the contours of the figures and shows movement by indicating direction. In the 1914 painting Friedrichstrasse, Berlin many growing figures are lined up as if moving behind one another, giving the impression that the people towards the back of the street are becoming younger and younger. The contours are blurred, and the figures are somewhat distorted. They seem to be transformed into a magical diagram of movement.

      With the outbreak of the World War I, Kirchner volunteered as a driver for the artillery an experience which weakened his already frail physical and psychological state. In 1917, severely ill, he moved to Davos, Switzerland and finally settled down in Frauenkirch. The mountain environment and the power and majesty of nature moved him to his core. Henceforth, this became his artistic world. In spite of recurring illness and depression, he created a wide-ranging body of work and participated in many exhibitions.

      Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street Scene (Friedrichstraße Berlin), 1914.

      Oil on canvas, 125 × 91 cm. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.

      After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, 639 works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were confiscated, of which 32 were shown at the 1937 Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich. In the same year, the Detroit Institute of Arts showed the first Kirchner retrospective in America. On 15 May 1938, at the age of 58, he took his own life.

      Erich Heckel’s early works have a flat and clearly contoured painting style marked by a raw and aggressive manner. His particular preference was for woodcuts, and his late works are marked by a certain lyrical quality. During the ‘Third Reich,’ 729 of his works were confiscated from museums and public collections, of which thirteen were shown at the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition. An air raid in 1944 destroyed his studio in Berlin. A great number of is works, including almost all the print blocks, were destroyed. He returned to Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance in a state of resignation.

      Karl Schmidt, who upon joining the artist group in 1905 called himself Schmidt-Rottluff, gave the Brücke its name. Today, his early works have become the very epitome of early Expressionism. He devoted himself to four main subjects: nudes, landscapes, СКАЧАТЬ