Frases de Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (54 citas)

“All art needs this visible world and will always need it. Quite simply because, being accessible to all, it is the key to all other worlds. ** Quote from Zeichnungen von E. L. Kirchner, (under his pseudonym de:Louis de Marsalle) E. L. Kirchner, Genius 2, Book 2, 1921, 216-234, reprinted by National Gallery, Washington D. C. 2003, p. 226”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

1920's

“Did you know that in 1900 I had the bold idea of renewing German art?... First of all I needed to invent a technique of grasping everything while it was in motion, and it was Rembrandts drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett in Munich that showed me how. I practiced seizing things quickly in bold strokes, wherever I was, walking and standing still.... and in this way I learned how to depict movement itself, and I found new forms in the ecstasy and haste of this work.... and to these forms was added pure colour, as pure as the sun generates it.... in line with Goethe's theory [of colours]. It makes pictures much more colorful. Making wood-cuts, which I'd learnt as a fifteen-year-old from my father, helped me to stabler and simpler forms. And armed in this way I returned to Dresden.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In a letter to Curt Valentin, 1937; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 38
1930's

“.. 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.”

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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

“.. 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.”

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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

“Our new little house [Kirchner moved to the Wildboden house] is a real joy to us. We shall live here comfortably and in great new order. This will really come to be a turning point of my life. Everything must be put in clear order and the little house furnished as simply and modestly as possible, while still being beautiful and intimate.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote from his Diary, 1923; as quoted by Kornfield, E. W.; Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992). Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1920's

“Many thanks for your letter and the Gauguin woodcuts... One can see, incidentally, that Gauguin had Persian miniatures, Indian batik and Chinese art in his very blood. The shapes of the birds and the horse show that clearly. But although it looks very well, Gauguin can't stimulate us present-day artists much. We need a direct route from life to plastic form. And we get it by perpetually drawing everything we see.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), Frauenkirch, 29 November 1920; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1920's

“The new school [in the Swiss village Frauenkirch where Kirchner lived since c. 1919] was inaugurated yesterday. It was a celebration with songs, dancing and speeches, followed by drinking such as I have not seen or experienced in decades. Everyone sat in the 'Post', the village council, the president of the council, the farmers, every one of one accord and friendly. They made a point of including me and so there I was, sitting once again amongst these people who had received me with such kindness and friendliness on the Alp twenty years ago. The relief [in the school, made by Kirchner] has found favour and was mentioned often in the speeches.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Dr. Karl Hagemann, 19 October 1936; as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
1930's

“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.”

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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

“I begin with movement... I believe that all human visual experiences are born from movement..”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

An unpublished manuscript 'Die Arbeit E. L. Kirchners' by E. L. Kirchner 1925–1926; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 39
1920's

“I found it very difficult to suddenly depart [from Berlin] since this year I had risen completely in the landscape and life and hardly needed awareness to access this place.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

original German version: 'Es fiel mir schwer, so plötzlich abzureisen, da ich dies Jahr vollständig in der Landschaft und dem Leben da oben aufging und nur fast ohne Bewusstsein zuzugreifen brauchte.'
as quoted in: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 41 (transl. Claire Albiez )
As Kirchner had been busying himself with nature images since the Summer of 1913, the outbreak of World War 1. brought him back to reality; as he describes here
undated

“I already realized [that time] that only a new study of nature and a new attitude towards life would bring the much-needed renewal of German art.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

looking back to his early art-student years in Munich [c. 1903/4], when he was standing before the artdeco paintings of Leo Putz and Fritz Erler
undated
Fuente: Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 26 (translation: Claire Louise Albiez https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564)

“Only the artist who has a love and an aptitude for craftsmanship should make prints; only when the artist truly prints himself does the work earn the name original print.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

quote of 1921; de:Louis de Marsalle, in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by 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. 40
1920's

“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.”

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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

“.. the feeling that pervades a city presented itself in the qualities of lines of force.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

from Diary entry 'Das Werk', 1925, in E. L. Kirchner Davoser Tagebuch, ed. Grisebach, p. 86
1920's

“Life is unfixed when one lives in Berlin, where one has to fight for a living. It is painfully base here. I see that a fine, free culture cannot be created under these circumstances and wish to leave as soon as I have overcome this big slump.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

End of 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (transl. Claire Louise Albiez); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 45
remark, shortly after their move to Berlin - the bustle, tempo, and anonymity of city-life soon got tough to Kirchner and the other Brücke members
1905 - 1915

“[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

in a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
1905 - 1915

“The people who live here [in and around Davos] are proud. The hard work, which is done with great love, the way they treat animals (you very seldom see an animal being mishandled) entitle them to be proud. In most cases, work here has reached the ideal standard of being done with love. You can see it in the movements of their hands. And that, in turn, ennobles the facial expression and imbues all personal contacts with a great delicacy.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote, c. 1920; as cited by Kornfield, E. W.; Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992), Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1920's

“.. the only certainty is that he [written by Kirchner himself] creates from the forms of the visible world, however close or far from them he desires to or must come.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote from 'Ein neuer Naturalismus? Eine Rundfrage des Kunstblatts', in 'Das Kunstblatt' 9, 1922; p. 375
1920's

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

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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

“Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 13 October 1918; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 223-224
1916 - 1919

“We Europeans have to toil to achieve it, at least as a transitional stage, for it is what we feed our dreams upon. These Orientals [from India] have it in their blood, perhaps because they spend their lives I the sun. We poor wretched Europeans must sacrifice body and soul for even a shadow of it… It is not a question of trying to reproduce objective features, only of good practice for the fingers and for the perceptive faculty, and that too is very useful. You must have read how Van Gogh was always getting his brother to send him drawings to copy. And how Rembrandt used to copy Indian an Italian pictures. Not of course, because they were short of material, but to get 'du corps'. So one should be always drawing… Oh, you'd love the Indians. The pure, Aryan Indians, not those one could see in Berlin, whose forms had become rigid and sterile through mingling with the Chinese.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 1919/20; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1916 - 1919

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

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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

“Believing in development, in a new generation of those who create and those who enjoy, we call together the youth of today. And as a youth which bears the future, we aim to create space to live and work, as opposition to the well-established, older powers. Everyone who reproduces, directly and without illusion, whatever he senses the urge to create, belongs to us.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

from the group manifesto of Die Brücke, written by Kirchner in Dresden, 1906; as quoted in 'The Artists' Association 'Brücke' – Chronology' http://www.bruecke-museum.de/chronology.htm, Brücke Museum. Retrieved 29 September 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1905 - 1915

“to study the nude, the foundation of all pictorial art, in total freedom and naturalness. From.... this basis there emerged the feeling, shared by all, of taking creative stimulus from life itself and submitting to the decisive experience.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Kirchner, in 'Chronik KG Brücke', 1913; a quoted by Wolf-Dieter Dube, Der Expressionismus in Wort und Bild (Genf and Stuttgart: Skira, Klett-Cotta, 1983), p. 34; as quoted 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. 68
1905 - 1915

“The struggle for existence is very difficult here [Berlin! - in 1911 Kirchner and his Brücke-friends moved from Dresden to Berlin], but the possibilities are also greater. I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

quote in a letter to Louise Schiefler, from Berlin, 5 November 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Grosstad, Eros und Natur, aus der verborgenen Sammlungen der Region, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst Germany, 2005, pp. 113-114
about the move of Die Brücke artists from Dresden to Berlin, Kirchner was optimistic in the beginning
1905 - 1915

“.. momentarily, we (Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, and I) are once again at Moritzburg. There is nothing more delightful than nudes in open air.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

note, 1910; in: ' 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen' ', Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 36
the location was a baroque hunting lodge at the Moritzburg Ponds a few miles from Dresden
1905 - 1915

“There is an intellectual guardianship over the world, it is man... This is the last judgement, before them you stand... They help you when you work. You can thank them only through work. When you want to die, they sometimes appear to you. When you are completely empty and completely open, you belong to them.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

after his mental recovery
quote from 'A Painter's Credo' c. 1919; from his Davoser Tagebuch'; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1916 - 1919

“I am very happy and thankful to be 'here' [Switzerland] and to remain. Here I can at least work a little on my good days, and be at peace among these simple, kindly people. In this solitude I have fought my way through to the possibility of continuing to live, even suffering so much. My time for circuses, 'cocottes' and company is over [referring to his wild 'Brücke'-years in Berlin]. I made what I could out of it, and I do not think it had been done in that way before. Otherwise there is nothing to link me with those 'événements'. During my 7 years in Berlin I let the whole essence of that kind of thing seep into me so thoroughly that I now know it back to front, and can leave it. Now I have other tasks, and they lie here… I cannot go down again into the throng. I am more than ever afraid of crowds. But more still, my work here is only at the beginning of its possibilities.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote in a letter to architect Henry van de Velde, from Frauenkirch, 5 July 1919; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1916 - 1919

“[the way of life of Die Brücke artists] though strange to the ordinary man, was not meant to shock, it was a pure and simple compulsion to integrate art and life..”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Quote in Expressionism, a German Intuition, 1905-1920: [Exhibition 1980-81]; Paul Vogt, Horts Keller, Martin Urban, Wolf-Dieter Dube, and Eberhard Roters; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1980, p. 7
undated

“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.”

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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