Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880-1938 Pastel on board 41x39 cm Signed lower left Provenance: (Private Collection and available upon request.) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was one of the fathers of the German expressionist movement (one of the first avant-garde) when he created the expressionist group Die BrückeKirchner began to paint self-taught. He was going to be an architect (in fact he got the diploma) but when he learned about wood engraving (xylography) his world changed. That coupled with his love for primitive art and Van Gogh painting ushered in a new and exciting phase in art history: Expressionism.Kirchner's typical shapes are reminiscent of xylography, with their contours of thick lines, sometimes irregular, as if they had incisions in wood. They are somewhat reminiscent of Van Gogh, but even more synthetic and two-dimensional, with even thicker brushstrokes, and unprecedented color autonomy.Its subject matter was generally quite lurid, the form very much in tune with the content: slums, narrow streets, Berlin... Circus performers, cabaret dancers and musicians, prostitutes... all outside of society, or in Nietzschean terms, of the same world as plastic artists.Everything was going relatively well until he fought in World War I. His health became bad, physically and mentally. With the arrival of the Nazis a few years after Kirchner, he was almost the No. 1 degenerate artist, he could not take his depressive state any longer and committed suicide in June 1938.

Very good condition Provenance available upon request. Private Collection.