Lot Essay
In 1910 Kirchner visited Berlin for the first time and later moved there from Dresden in 1911. In contrast to his life in Dresden, in Berlin the artist was faced with different social circumstances and new impressions of the vibrant life of a big city. This experience offered totally new and different perspectives for Kirchner and was to influence the subject matter and style of his art during these crucial years. His pictures were now characterised by an elongation of form and thinness of proportion of the figures that were main subjects of his work. The sharper shapes were rendered with an energetic diagonal hatching that aptly caught the vitality of Berlin social life. Edward Lucie-Smith writes: "Kirchner was indeed producing some of his best work of this epoch, notably the hallucinatory Berlin street-scenes featuring prostitutes which give a strong impression of the feverish atmosphere of the German capital just before and just after the beginning of the war." (Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists, London, n.d., p. 62).
The present drawing relates closely to the great 1914 oil painting of Berlinerstrasse (D.E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, 1968, no. 367) which is now in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. A very comparable pastel drawing also preparatory to the Stuttgart picture is in a private collection (R. N. Ketterer, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pastels and Drawings, New York, 1982, no. 50, illustrated p. 121). They both depict the blue-dressed prostitutes in the foreground, another figure in a brown coat standing to the left and a group of people on the street behind them. The background in both drawings is characterised by a semicircular arc.
The two drawing presumably served as preparatory sketches for the oil painting. For the final composition of the painting, Kirchner combined compositional elements from the two drawing. The prostitutes in the foreground, the man standing next to them and the people lining up behind them appear in both. The present drawing does not have the wheels of a car which is in both the oil painting and the other drawing. It does however have the dog at the lower right which is incorporated into the Stuttgart picture but is not present in the other preparatory drawing.
The present drawing is charateristic of the highly individual and expressionistic drawing style Kirchner had evolved by 1913 and which give his drawings and paintings of this period such dynamism. Claus
Zoege von Manteuffel writes of the related pastel "...with this colored drawing, Kirchner's art reaches one of it's furthest limits." R.N. Ketterer (op.cit. p. 120) further states: "His street scenes are among the most important achievements of 20th century art."
The present drawing relates closely to the great 1914 oil painting of Berlinerstrasse (D.E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, 1968, no. 367) which is now in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. A very comparable pastel drawing also preparatory to the Stuttgart picture is in a private collection (R. N. Ketterer, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pastels and Drawings, New York, 1982, no. 50, illustrated p. 121). They both depict the blue-dressed prostitutes in the foreground, another figure in a brown coat standing to the left and a group of people on the street behind them. The background in both drawings is characterised by a semicircular arc.
The two drawing presumably served as preparatory sketches for the oil painting. For the final composition of the painting, Kirchner combined compositional elements from the two drawing. The prostitutes in the foreground, the man standing next to them and the people lining up behind them appear in both. The present drawing does not have the wheels of a car which is in both the oil painting and the other drawing. It does however have the dog at the lower right which is incorporated into the Stuttgart picture but is not present in the other preparatory drawing.
The present drawing is charateristic of the highly individual and expressionistic drawing style Kirchner had evolved by 1913 and which give his drawings and paintings of this period such dynamism. Claus
Zoege von Manteuffel writes of the related pastel "...with this colored drawing, Kirchner's art reaches one of it's furthest limits." R.N. Ketterer (op.cit. p. 120) further states: "His street scenes are among the most important achievements of 20th century art."