Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

1880-1938

European Artist

Kirchner was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany to an upper-middle-class family. He studied at the Technische Hochschule (Technical School) in the Lehr- und Versuchatelier für Angewandte und Freie Kunst (Teaching and Experimental Studio for Applied and Fine Art) in Munich. There he was exposed to a variety of influences: the exoticism and primitivism of Art Nouveau, the art of Vasilij Kandinsky and his Phalanx group, Post-Impressionism, drawings by Rembrandt, and prints by Dürer. From 1913 until 1915 Kirchner painted large street scenes of Berlin showing elegant and colorful young women caught up in the nervous, hectic activities of city life. In these Expressionist images, Kirchner abandoned his earlier fluid Art Nouveau style for the quick, broken crosshatchings and angular brushstrokes of his mature work. Kirchner went on to have major exhibitions in Berlin (1921), Basel (1923), Berne (1933), and Detroit (1937). But from 1926 he suffered from depression, which worsened in 1937. In despair about the political situation in Germany, his physical health, and overwhelming loneliness, Kirchner committed suicide on 15 June 1938.