Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Paint

“.. he [is Kirchner, writing about himself] was especially interested in the naturally naked human being. He knowingly broke the traditional manner of the nude study and created for himself in his studio [in his Brücke-years in Berlin] a circle of young women, whom he studied in their free movement. Thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings and studies resulted from this. A beautiful, healthy, blossoming sensuality that never turns base emanates from these works.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Kirchner; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (Claire Louise Albiez, translation); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 28
undated

Women , Beauty , Nature , Study

“.. and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature... We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
1920's

Life , People , Fools , Way

“I find it increasingly necessary to express my ideas first in engraving or lithography so that they may develop before I start to paint. Every year my form and expression become more sensitive, and my ideas frequently have to pass through three graphic stages before I can start on the canvas... I can hear you say no, that is impossible because the value of the colors demands quite different treatment from black and white, but it is the inner idea that I try to establish firmly through graphic preparation.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler, 1924, in Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: His Graphic Art, Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1961, p. 96 - note 46
1920's

Color , Idea , Painting

“Bloated, one [=Kirchner himself] staggers off to work, where all work is in vain and the onslaught of mediocrity flattens everything. Like the cocottes that I painted, that is how one is now. Wiped out, next time gone.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote of Kirchner in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, March 28, 1919, in Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: Graphik, p. 49; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 78
1916 - 1919

Time , Painting

“The technical procedures doubtless release energies in the artist that remain unused in the much more lightweight processes of drawing or painting”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

referring to his printmaking
Quote from Uber Kirchners Graphik, (under his pseudonym de:Louis de Marsalle) E. L. Kirchner, Genius 3, Book 2, 1922, 251-63, reprinted by National Gallery, Washington D.C. 2003, p. 226
1920's

Drawing , Painting

“I see possibilities for a whole new way of painting, in which planes are used more freely. Weaving and embroidery make this possible.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

variant of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 'Family – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner' https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/collection/8144-ernst-ludwig-kirchner-familie
1920's

Way , Painting

“The bleak and yet so intimate nature of the mountains has had an enormous impact on the painter. It has deepened his love for his subjects and at the same time purged his vision of everything that is secondary. Nothing inessential appears in the paintings, but how delicately every detail is worked out! The creative thought emerges strongly and nakedly from the finished work. Kirchner is now so taken up with entirely new problems that one cannot apply the old criteria to him if one is to do justice to his work. Those who wish to classify him on the strength of his German paintings will be both disappointed and surprised. Far from destroying him, his serious illness has matured him. Besides his work on visible life, creativity stemming solely from the imagination has opened up its vast potential to him – for this the brief span of his life will probably be far from sufficient.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote from the 'Preface' of the catalog of Kirchner's Frankfurt exhibition in 1922, (written by Kirchner, about Kirchner under his pseudonym de:Louis de Marsalle); as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
1920's

Love , Life , Justice , Disappointment

“I see the possibilities of a new kind of painting. With free surfaces, the goal I was always steering towards.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In a letter, 1923; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 52
1920's

Painting

“The woodcut is the most graphic of the printmaking techniques. Its practice demands much technical ability and interest. Kirchner's technical skill made woodcutting easy for him. Thus he came in a spontaneous way through the simplification necessary here to a clear style of representation. We see in his woodcuts, which constantly accompanied his creative work, the formal language of the paintings prefigured.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

de:Louis de Marsalle (pseudonym of Kirchner) Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 252-53; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 52
1920's

Way , Painting

“They [his 'Street Scene' paintings and drawings, he made in Berlin] originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote from Kirchner's Notebook entry 'Meine Strasenbilder', 24 Augustus 1919; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik, M. M. Moeller, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1990 p. 184
1916 - 1919

Life , People , Cars , Time

“.. how the movement of the passers-by [in his Street scene painting of 191-14] is comprehended in the rhombus of the heads which is twice repeated. In this way life and movement arise from an original geometric form. [Kirchner designed a diagram together with this line in the letter]”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Karl Hagemann, 27 February 1937; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 81 - note 31
1930's

Life , Way , Painting

“Now I'm sitting quietly at home again and I'm happy to be able to work undisturbed. I made a lot of sketches of life in Germany and it was very intriguing to see life there [in Berlin, a stay for three weeks]. I was also glad to see the old pictures of Rembrandt, Dürer, etc. again and to have the confirmation and encouragement they gave me. As for the moderns, I saw damned little that gripped me... Modern German painting has moved so far away from me and become unintelligible in areas in which my work had, and still has, an influence; but people like Klee, Kandinsky, etc. have moved much closer to me again, in fact I value the Bauhaus more and more. These people are working and developing. You can see that there is development. And they love their work, which is the main thing.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Dr. Karl Hagemann, 26 March 1926 (short after a stay of 3 weeks in Berlin; as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
1920's

Love , Life , People , Home

“There was such a wonderful setting of the moon this morning, the yellow moon against little pink clouds, and the mountains a pure deep blue [viewed from his Swiss farmhouse], quite glorious, I would so have liked to paint. But it was cold, even my window was frozen, although I had kept the fire in all night.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In a letter from Frauenkirch, Jan. 1919; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 48
Some time later Kirchner would made a colored wood-cut: 'Moonlit Winter Night' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Kirchner_-_Wintermondnacht.jpg
1916 - 1919

Mountain , Painting , Night

“The desire that drives an artist to graphic work is perhaps partly the effort to capture the unique and indefinite nature of a drawing in a fixed and durable form. Another aspect of it is that the technical manipulations exercise energies in the artist that he does not use in the far less strenuous crafts of drawing and painting... the mysterious attraction that surrounded the invention of printing in the Middle Ages is still felt by anyone who takes up graphics seriously and performs every stage in the process wit hits own hands.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 27
undated

Age , Exercises , Nature , Effort