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Lot Essay
The new and exotic dance performances in the cabarets and music halls of Dresden and Berlin before the Great War provided Kirchner with endless inspiration and became the subject of some of his most celebrated colour prints: the colour lithographs Russisches Tänzerpaar (1909) and Cake-Walk (1910) and the present woodcut of the Englische Steptänzerinnen.
Always experimenting and adapting his work processes according to the desired effect, Kirchner printed this woodcut from three blocks: The underlying colours green, yellow and pink were printed from one block only, sawn into three parts, re-assembled and printed in one go. The resulting proximity of the different colour planes lends the print a clarity and cohesion rarely found even amongst Kirchner's great colour woodcuts. By then using two black blocks, one for the plants and borderlines and one for the dancers, he created a clear distinction between back- and foreground, emphasizing space and movement. The pink skin tone of the dancers shows through the narrow paralell incisions along their legs, turning the flat, black printed surfaces into bodies of flesh and blood. The synchronised, yet slightly varied movements of the two dancers and their angular poses imitate the pace and rythm of the tap-dance. Here Kirchner is at the height of his faculties as a printmaker, as he explores and takes full advantage of the possibilities of the medium.
The date which Kirchner chose to inscribe on the print gives an interesting insight into the psychology, one might say vanity, that can affect even the most committed artist. Whilst there is no doubt that this woodcut was executed in 1911, so keen was he to appear to be the most precocious and innovative of the Brücke artists that he back-dated it by seven years.
We are grateful to Professor Dr. Günther Gercken, Lütjensee, Germany, for his assistence in cataloguing this lot. Professor Gercken is currently preparing the new catalogue raisonné of prints by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Gercken records five colour impressions of this print, including the present one. Of these five, two are in public collections (National Gallery of Washington, Washington, D.C. and Coninx-Museum, Zurich). Only one impression printed in black alone is known.
Always experimenting and adapting his work processes according to the desired effect, Kirchner printed this woodcut from three blocks: The underlying colours green, yellow and pink were printed from one block only, sawn into three parts, re-assembled and printed in one go. The resulting proximity of the different colour planes lends the print a clarity and cohesion rarely found even amongst Kirchner's great colour woodcuts. By then using two black blocks, one for the plants and borderlines and one for the dancers, he created a clear distinction between back- and foreground, emphasizing space and movement. The pink skin tone of the dancers shows through the narrow paralell incisions along their legs, turning the flat, black printed surfaces into bodies of flesh and blood. The synchronised, yet slightly varied movements of the two dancers and their angular poses imitate the pace and rythm of the tap-dance. Here Kirchner is at the height of his faculties as a printmaker, as he explores and takes full advantage of the possibilities of the medium.
The date which Kirchner chose to inscribe on the print gives an interesting insight into the psychology, one might say vanity, that can affect even the most committed artist. Whilst there is no doubt that this woodcut was executed in 1911, so keen was he to appear to be the most precocious and innovative of the Brücke artists that he back-dated it by seven years.
We are grateful to Professor Dr. Günther Gercken, Lütjensee, Germany, for his assistence in cataloguing this lot. Professor Gercken is currently preparing the new catalogue raisonné of prints by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Gercken records five colour impressions of this print, including the present one. Of these five, two are in public collections (National Gallery of Washington, Washington, D.C. and Coninx-Museum, Zurich). Only one impression printed in black alone is known.