Frases de Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (54 citas, página 2)

“[The account of a man who sells his shadow is] in actual fact the life story of a persecution complex, that is to say, the paranoid narration of a man who through one event or another is suddenly made aware of his infinite smallness and at the same time finds the means by which to deceive the world in general, concerning this discovery.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, 27 June, 1919; as quoted by Paul Rabe, in Illustrated Books and Periodicals in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings; The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Vol. 1.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989, p. 119
for Kirchner the Schlemihl illustrations he made for Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte ('The wondrous story of Peter Schlemihl') were a release from his existential anxieties
1916 - 1919

“[that all differences among the former Brücke members should be put in the past and that].. every individual conflict must be silenced and that everyone join together in the name of the whole, that is for our modern German art.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In a letter to Hans Fehr, 1937; as quoted in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 338 (transl. (transl. Claire Albiez)
When die Brücke was shown at the infamous 'Degenerate Art' show in Munich by the Nazi's in 1937, Kirchner wrote this to Hans Fehr
1930's

“It would be nice if you wouldn't call me an expressionist. I'm really not one.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

German original version: (schön wäre es, wenn Sie mich nicht Expressionisten nennen würden. Ich bin wirklich keiner.]
Quote from Kirchner's handwritten addendum in his letter to de:Gustav Schiefler, 20 October, 1927; from GB vol. 2, no. 411, p. 497; as cited by Peter H. Fox in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Shadow; from the digital archive Loss and Restitution: The Story of the Grunwald Family Collection by the Hammer Museum
1920's

“After the war [1918] etching became Kirchner's favorite medium. He attributed this to its responsiveness. 'Etchings', he wrote, 'develop in the first states the most immediate hieroglyphs. Rich in lively handwriting and rich in variety of motifs, the etchings are like a diary of the painter.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

de:Louis de Marsalle, in Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 258; 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. 53
1920's

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

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

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

“Here we have been hearing terrible rumours about torture of the Jews [by the Nazis], but it's all surely untrue. I'm a little tired and sad about the situation up there. There is a war in the air. In the museums, the hard-won cultural achievements of the last 20 years are being destroyed, and yet the reason why founded the Brücke was to encourage truly German art, made in Germany. And now it is supposed to be un-German [Degenerated Art / Entartete Kunst]. Dear God. It does upset me.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Karl Hagemann, May 1933; as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
1930's

“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.”

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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

“I was born near a station. The first things that I saw in my life were the moving locomotives and trains, and I drew them as a three-year-old. Perhaps it is because of this that observations of movement are my impetus for my inspiration to create. Out of this I receive a creative experience of life, which is the source of creativity.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Kirchner had been inspired by movement and trains his whole life. He painted a. o. 'Nollendorfplatz' in West Berlin https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner_-_Nollendorfplatz.jpg - it was one of the stops on the first electrical tram (Straßenbahn) in 1896, according to 'Lexicon der Berliner Stadtentwicklung'. Berlin, 2002. The Underground (Untergrundbahn) followed in 1902, also with a stop at 'Nollendorfplatz'
undated
Fuente: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 17 (transl. Claire Albiez)

“You too, find release only in art, you are one of those privileged people who have that gift, and you will be free and at peace so long as you make use of it. Art gives us an inner superiority, for it has scope for every sensation of which human beings are capable, and first and foremost for love, which is the basis for knowledge. The artist loves without wanting to possess, and no one on earth can understand that except other artists, that is why other people think us mad.”

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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

“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.”

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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

“It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to dissolve myself completely into the sensations of the surroundings in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Karl Ernst Osthaus, 23 December 1917; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 36
1916 - 1919

“.. 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]”

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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

“.. art is made by man. His own figure is the center of all art... Therefore one must begin with the man himself.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

c. 1910; as quoted in: Der Blick auf Fränzi und Marcella: Zwei Modelle der Brücke-Künstler Heckel, Kirchner und Pechstein, Norbert Nobis; Sprengel Museum Hannover und Stiftung Moritzburg, 2011, p 17
1905 - 1915

“After lengthy struggles I now find myself here [Dr Kohnstamm's sanatorium in Königstein, in Taunus] for a time to put my mind into some kind of order. It is a terribly difficult thing, of course, to be among strangers so much of the day. But perhaps I'll be able to see and create something new. For the time being, I would like more peace and absolute seclusion. Of course, I long more and more for my work and my studio. Theories may be all very well for keeping a spiritual balance, but they are grey and shadowy compared with work and life.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter from Königstein, Taunus to Dr. Karl Hagemann, January 1916 (friend and patron in Leverkusen and collector of his art); as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
Kirchner suffered then a serious mental breakdown and was also afraid for being drafted once more in the German army, so back in the war
1916 - 1919

“Every day I studied the nude, and movement in the streets and in the shops [in Berlin]. Out of the naturalistic surface with all its variations I wanted to derive the pictorially determined surface.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Letter to Botho Graef, 21 September 1916; as quoted in Voices of German Expressionism, ed. Victor H. Miesel, Tate publishing, London 2003 p. 18
1916 - 1919

“Completely strange faces pop up as interesting points through the crowd. I am carried along with the current, lacking will. To move becomes an unacceptable effort”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

describing the crowds in Dresden
quote in a letter to fellow-painter Erich Heckel, from Dresden, before 1910; as quoted in 'the information added to his painting Street, Dresden' by the MOMA museum https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/ernst-ludwig-kirchner-street-dresden-1908-reworked-1919-dated-on-painting-1907
1905 - 1915

“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.”

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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

“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.”

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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

“A primitive power of artistic sensuousness speaks from the prints, which itself develops directly from the graphic technique that is tied to painstaking effort. Like the 'savage' who with patience cuts the figure.... out of the hard wood, so the artist creates perhaps his purest and strongest pieces.... following the primordial curse, if one may so understand it: from the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

de:Louis de Marsalle, Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921):, p. 263; 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, pp. 52-53
1920's

“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.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

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

“[that] simple people brought their bodies and shared their scanty bread with the artists. Kirchner learned the course of life again in their houses.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

later quote of Kirchner (writing in the third person); as quoted in Claire Louise Albiez https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564, in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, May 2013, p. 38
about the relaxed atmosphere, not only found in die Brücke's ateliers, but also through the Brücke-artists' contact to common people in the working quarter of the city of Dresden, c. 1906-10
undated

“A happy coincidence brought together [in Die Brücke ]the really talented men whose characters and gifts, even in human terms, left them with no other choice than the profession of artist. This form of living, of dwelling and working, though peculiar for a regular human being, was not a deliberate 'epater le bourgeois', but simply a very naive and pure necessity to harmonize art and life. And it was precisely this more than anything else that so tremendously influenced the forms of present-day art. Of course, it was mostly misunderstood and totally distorted, for there [the will] fashioned the form and gave it meaning, whereas here the unfamiliar form is affixed to habit, like a top hat on a cow.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as quoted in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 93
1920's

“The beautiful, architectonically constructed, severely formed bodies of these women [his girlfriend in Berlin and life companion, Erna with her sister Gerda] replaced the soft Saxon physique.”

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

In 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. 36
1920's

“Nowhere does one come to know an artist better than in his prints [and] the woodcut is the most graphic of the print processes.”

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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. 39
Kirchner expressed the significance of print-making for German Expressionism in general when he wrote this quote
1920's