Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)

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Max Pechstein (1881-1955)
Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966)
Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Erich Heckel (1883-1970)
Otto Mueller (1874-1930)
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976)

Ernest Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff were
the founder members of Die Brcke (The Bridge); established at first in the city of
Dresden, 1905.

From the very outset they established that they would have nothing to do with
older German established bourgeois life. They saw themselves as bohemians, a
new collective who were set on re-establishing a German spirit within modern art.

Their art confronted feelings of alienation from the modern world by reaching
back to pre-academic forms of expression including woodcut prints, carved
wooden sculptures, and "primitive" modes of painting. This quest for authentic
emotion led to an expressive style characterized by heightened colour and a
direct, simplified approach to form.

Die Brcke is typically seen as the spearhead of German Expressionism,

chronologically the first of two groups (the other being Der Blaue Reiter) that
pushed German modern art onto the international avant-garde scene.

The founding members had received no formal artistic training and they would
learn new skills as they went along. They stressed the value of youth and
intuition in escaping the intellectual cul-de-sac of academic thought focused on
copying earlier models.
The name Die Brcke was chosen to indicate the group's desire to "bridge" the
past and present. From the past, they chose to reassert Germany's rich artistic
history, taking inspiration from the print and painting techniques of Albrecht
Drer, Matthias Grnewald, and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Developing the modern example of expressive colorists like Vincent van

Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Henri Matisse, sharp and sometimes violently
clashing colours are often used in Die Brcke - painting to jolt the viewer into the
experience of a particular emotion.

Indeed the initial expressive energy is a key element to understanding this

aesthetic. We find often extremely aggressive juxtapositions.

Where the later Blau Rieter artists were considered, sensitive, subtle even, the
Bridge painters were crude and strikingly primitive. However, as Emile Nolde
would put it, there existed an irresistible desire to express a deep spirituality
and inwardness.

In attempting to shock the viewer into experiencing something new, the Die
Brcke painters were very capable of presenting the macabre and the grotesque.
This is clearly found in the work of Kirchner and Nolde for example.

For the painters of Die Brcke, a new German relationship to honesty was the
order of the day. They wanted to do away with the sham aesthetics of the
academy, which had been polluted by decades of bourgeois over self-
indulgence.

For the likes of Kirchner, the Germans destined role in art was to portray
powerful feelings through subjects deeply stirring and at once exciting and
terrific.
Kirchner said: how radically different our German and Latin artistic creations!
The German creates his form out of fantasy, out of his Inner vision and the
whole form of visible nature is a symbol to him for the Latin beauty lies in
appearance; the other seeks it beyond things.

This feeling towards a unique idea of Germanic art is clearly an echo of the
Romantic notions of a soulfulness within German art, with its roots not in the
form conscious tradition of Greece and Rome, but in the native spirituality of
Gothic and medieval art.

The painters of Die Brucke, (the original four were later joined by a further three:
Emile Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller) were not unlike the Nazarenes in
their desires to form a single communal pattern of life. They lived together and
shared food and materials and would often not sign their works when exhibiting
in group shows.

Religious themes

A deep sense of a new religiosity permeates the works of some of the members,
not least the biblical works of Heckel, Schimdt-Rottluff and Nolde.

However, this is a new primitive vision of the Holy Spirit that made no
concessions at all to the traditional church art format.

Early Around the time of its inception, the members of the Die Brcke were
busying themselves learning the traditions related to German wood cut printing.

Woodcuts

Members of Die Brcke worked on many media and materials: painting, drawing,
acting, lithography, Wood carving, andperhaps most important the woodcut.
The was largely self-taught and then share non-academic sources in order to
hone their skills.
Show technique video.

Kirchner, had shown enthusiasm for early German He was tremendously inspired
by a selection of old German prints he had seen already as far back as 1889.

Heckel also had an early interest in late medieval German woodcut.

The Japanese woodcuts were also of interest to the members of the group. More
directly was the influence of Felix Vallotton.

The efforts of the book painters in the Woodstock medium not only belong to the
most important accomplishments, but were also decisive in the development of
their style in painting.

Nudes

From 1909 to 1911 Kirchner and other members of the Brcke group spent part
of each summer at the Moritzburg Lakes near Dresden. Their relaxed, communal
lifestyle and nude bathing reflected a cult of nature that was growing in Germany
at the time.

For the artists of Die Brcke, escaping the academy was part of a larger mission
to escape the strictures of modern middle-class life. Nudity and explorations of
free sexuality in their work (in domestic interiors and in nature) are often
contrasted with images of the city, where human interaction is uncomfortably
negotiated through prescribed social attitudes.

In September and October of 1906, Die Brcke mounted its first exhibition,
focused on the theme of the female nude. The group held the event in the
showroom of the Karl-Max Seifert lamp factory, a venue procured through one of
Erich Heckel's connections from design school. In contrast to the factory polish of
the chandeliers and candelabras on display, Fritz Bleyl designed an
expressionistic poster for the event featuring a partially abstracted nude woman.
For Die Brcke and its proponents, the figure was striking and direct, reflecting
the group's attitude toward open sexuality and the natural state of nudity.
Reduced formally by Bleyl's style and the printed medium to a series of curves
and contours, the poster was nonetheless deemed too sexually suggestive for
public view and banned under the pornography clause in Germany's national
penal code.

Berlin and the city.

Though Max Pechstein moved first, the choice to move the Die Brcke group to
Berlin was made largely by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who saw greater artistic
opportunity in the more populous cultural center. Painted shortly after the
breakup of Die Brcke, however, Street, Berlin exemplifies the destabilizing
effect the city had on Kirchner, who referred to the years 1911 to 1914 as "the
loneliest times of my life." In the forefront are two garishly painted prostitutes who
stroll down a street so drastically flattened that they appear to be sliding off the
canvas. They are as much on view, for sale, and separate as the trinkets in the
storefront window a man peruses on the right. Kirchner would later write that as
an artist he identified with the prostitute, being constantly asked to sell himself to
survive. Thus, the work can be read as an iconic self-portrait depicting both his
formal innovations and the psychological motivations that produced them.