Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)

Wildboden (Bergwald; Sommerlicher Waldweg)

細節

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
Wildboden (Bergwald; Sommerlicher Waldweg)
signed 'K' (lower left); signed again, titled and inscribed 'E L. Kirchner, Wildboden, Bergwald' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
53¼ x 39¼in. (135.3 x 99.7cm.)
Painted in 1927-28

來源

The Artist's Estate.
Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York, 1923 (no. 2364).
Frank M. Hall Collection, Lincoln.
University Galleries, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (acquired from the above in 1952).

出版

University of Nebraska, Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, Winter, 1953, pl. 11 (illustrated).
Ed. University of Nebraska, Selected Works, Lincoln, 1963, no. 52 (illustrated).
D. E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 1968, p. 396, no. 892 (illustrated).

展覽

Cambridge, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Kirchner, Dec. 1950-Jan. 1951, p. 6.
Lincoln, University Galleries, Nebraska Art Association Sixty-Second Annual Exhibition, March-April 1952, p. 5.
Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Exhibitons of Paintings from the College and University Collections, Jan. 1953, no. 11 (illustrated).
New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, In Memory of Curt Valentin, An Exhibiton of Modern Masterpieces Lent by American Museums, Oct. 1954, no. 10.
Mannhattan, Kansas, Kansas State University, 1957.
Omaha, Nebraska, Joselyn Art Museum, 100 Works, UN-L, 1961.
Columbia, Missouri, Stephens College, Dedication Exhibition, Oct.-Nov. 1964.
Baltimore, Museum of Fine Art, From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by European and American Artists, Oct.-Dec. 1968, p. 139, no. 116 (illustrated).
Omaha, Nebraska, Joselyn Art Museum, Thirties Decade, Oct.-Dec. 1971, no. 113.
Lincoln, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, Sheldon Sampler, March-Dec. 1997 (on extended loan).

拍品專文

Upon the suggestion of Kirchner's friend Eberhard Grisebach, the artist moved from Berlin to Davos in 1917, to convalesce from a nervous breakdown and general ill health after his military service. He was taken into the care of Grisebach's father-in-law, the famous lung specialist Dr. Lucius Sprengler. Enchanted by the monumentality of nature and the simplicity of rural life, Kirchner started to paint the villages in the mountains, the farmers doing their work, and above all, the magnificent landscape with its dramatic mountains, peaceful pastures and thick woods.

After the unexpected death of his benefactor Spengler in 1923, Kirchner was forced to give up his house 'In den Lärchen' and moved to another on the Wildboden, where he was to live and work until his death in 1938. Later in 1923 he felt inspired to pursue a new direction in his painting style after meeting the weaver Lise Guyer and seeing a tapestry she had made after one of his designs:

"I see a new way of painting becoming possible, with more independent planes, toward which I must already have always been steering. The new way of painting in more independent planes marks the beginning of the Wildboden style" (D. Gordon, op. cit., p. 124).

The present painting, with its vivid colours and jagged planar movement, exemplifies Kirchner's 'Wildboden' style:

" ... Kirchner's late styles remain boldly innovational to the end...he retained that inner curiosity and formal inventiveness which had characterised his work from its beginnings. More like Picasso than any other contemporary artist, ranging in temperament and in style from extremes of expression to those of abstraction, from sheer decorative beauty to stunningly intuitive symbolic forms, Kirchner at Wildboden successfully wedded discipline with fantasy" (ibid, p. 126).