Kirchner

by Norbert Wolf

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brücke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner’s work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic city vistas such as Berlin Street Scene (1913) or in his famously decadent studio. In this introductory book, we explore the stretch of Kirchner’s career through Germany and Switzerland, including his founding of Die Brücke, and his inclusion in the Nazis’ infamous “degenerate art” exhibition in 1937. Along the way, we’ll encounter vivid landscapes, stark nudes, intense urban settings, and, above all, a persistent emphasis on the emotional experience of painter and viewer. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Germany, Biography, Reference

96 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Norbert Wolf is an art historian and author based in Munich. He has published several books with Prestel, including "Art Nouveau", "Art Deco", "Impressionism", "Spanish Painting", and "The Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting", as well as monographs on Albrecht Dürer and Titian.

Reviews

[Talie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kirchner declared, “Germanic art is religion in the widest sense of the word; Romance [i.e. French] art is reproduction, depiction, description or paraphrasing of nature. A German paints the ‘what’, a Frenchman the ‘how’ ... There are only a very few German artists who have been pathfinders in design, since Dürer almost none.” Kirchner counted himself among the few legitimate heirs of Dürer. He had tracked down form, he said, though of course not for its own sake in the sense of French “art for art’s sake”, but, as another diary entry states, as the “expression of his dreams”, as the vehicle of something spiritual, transcendental.
کیرشنر ایگوی متورمی داشت. گروه پل که او و چند هنرمند دیگر تشکیل داده بودند در اثر خودبرتربینی‌های او از هم پاشید. تاثیراتش از هنرمندان دیگر مثل فووها و نبی‌ها را انکار می‌کرد.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really funny reading accounts how self aggrandizing he was with a lot of sarcasm from the author, good artist though.