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Lot Essay
This work is listed in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archives, Wichtrach/Bern.
Austellung Deutsche Grafik im Kunstsalon Wolfsberg is a striking gouache painting that Kirchner made in the early 1920s as the design for a poster advertising an exhibition of German prints at the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich. This gallery was owned and run by J. E. Wolfensberg, a printmaker with a strong interest in avant-garde art. Kirchner, who had moved to Switzerland in 1917 following his mental breakdown and discharge from military service, was one, among many other avant-garde artists such as Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Hans Arp and Alexei von Jawlensky, whose graphic work was shown in this gallery.
Integrating both image and text into a bold and cohesive composition rendered predominantly in the contrasting colours of (life-affirming) red and (cold) blue, the motif of this poster is a simple and typically Expressionist symbol of birth and optimism for a new age. In the aftermath of the First World War and amidst the initial utopianism that first greeted the German revolution and the foundation of a new Republic, much Expressionist art championed this 'dawn of a new era' with images of the birth of the New Man or a star child. Here, in this gouache, executed one or two years later, Kirchner offers a slightly more grounded version of this same idea displaying a young child holding a bunch of flowers aloft while hovering, like a thought or dream, over the dead body of a German soldier.
Clearly an image of optimism and of a new beginning, this dramatic poster design offers what is also a more personal image - one that seems, like Kirchner was himself still doing at this time, to be still reflecting on and coming to terms with, the scale of the tragedy, trauma and loss that had so recently gone before.
Austellung Deutsche Grafik im Kunstsalon Wolfsberg is a striking gouache painting that Kirchner made in the early 1920s as the design for a poster advertising an exhibition of German prints at the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich. This gallery was owned and run by J. E. Wolfensberg, a printmaker with a strong interest in avant-garde art. Kirchner, who had moved to Switzerland in 1917 following his mental breakdown and discharge from military service, was one, among many other avant-garde artists such as Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Hans Arp and Alexei von Jawlensky, whose graphic work was shown in this gallery.
Integrating both image and text into a bold and cohesive composition rendered predominantly in the contrasting colours of (life-affirming) red and (cold) blue, the motif of this poster is a simple and typically Expressionist symbol of birth and optimism for a new age. In the aftermath of the First World War and amidst the initial utopianism that first greeted the German revolution and the foundation of a new Republic, much Expressionist art championed this 'dawn of a new era' with images of the birth of the New Man or a star child. Here, in this gouache, executed one or two years later, Kirchner offers a slightly more grounded version of this same idea displaying a young child holding a bunch of flowers aloft while hovering, like a thought or dream, over the dead body of a German soldier.
Clearly an image of optimism and of a new beginning, this dramatic poster design offers what is also a more personal image - one that seems, like Kirchner was himself still doing at this time, to be still reflecting on and coming to terms with, the scale of the tragedy, trauma and loss that had so recently gone before.