From Kirchner to Beckmann

This autumn the Van Gogh Museum will show a selection of works by German Expressionists on paper. From Kirchner to Beckmann focuses on Die Brücke, as well as showing work by leading artists not part of this group. Around 80 drawings and prints, all from the Hamburger Kunsthalle collection, provide an excellent survey of this influential early twentieth-century artistic movement. While elsewhere in Europe Fauvism - the French form of Expressionism - and Cubism were emerging, a group of young, self-taught artists came together in Dresden in 1905 under the name of Die Brücke. They drew inspiration from primitive cultures and they were influenced by painters such as Gauguin, Munch and Van Gogh. The latter was often considered to be the first Expressionist and by 1914 his work was already well known in artistic circles in Germany. This show of German Expressionists therefore fits in with the Van Gogh Museum's aim to present the successors of this famous artist. Although the early work of the Brücke artists exudes optimism, later they tended to concentrate on the darker side of the human psyche. Their work is characterised by bright, contrasting colours, solid contours and simple forms. Drawing played an important role: they attempted to capture the essence of the subject in quick, expressive sketches. The technique of woodcut was an ideal medium in which to render the rawness of life in all its rough and brutal reality. Moreover, these artists were not afraid of provocative subjects. This exhibition, compiled by guest curators Jill Lloyd and Andreas Stolzenburg, features work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. The central theme of the presentation is the Expressionist image of the human form. Visitors are shown how the mood of German Expressionism changed over the years and how the idealistic, colourful works of the early Brücke years in Dresden made way for the nervous, urban Expressionism of the art produced in Berlin. This was the eve of the First World War and the period of the 1918 revolution that marked the transformation from Empire to Republic. Artists outside the Brücke circle also responded in their own way to the tremendous changes in society and the new atmosphere of uncertainty, violence and modernity: for example, Emil Nolde sought refuge in nature, religion and exoticism; by contrast, Otto Dix depicted the horrors of war in the famous trench scenes he produced in 1924; Max Beckmann expressed his incisive criticism of society and human existence in the cynical images of his Die Hölle cycle of etchings made in 1918/19. Interest in this new artistic movement soon grew in the modern harbour city of Hamburg, with its wealth of museums and collectors. Portraits of two of their most prominent supporters, the judge Gustav Schiefler and art historian Rosa Schapire, are featured in the show. The Hamburger Kunsthalle's remarkable collection of Expressionist prints and drawings did not survive the Nazi regime's Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) campaign intact, and many works of art were removed from the museum. Fortunately, the museum has been able to fill many of the gaps in this important collection in the post-war period. Pressetext

From Kirchner to Beckmann
Expressionist prints and drawings from the Hamburger Kunsthalle

Werke von Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann