Sich sonnende Badende

This swiftly drawn bathing scene is one the earliest experiments in colour lithography by the artist. Only a handful of earlier examples exist, created very sporadically between 1907 and 1909. Kirchner used the same, quite small stone with the broken corners only for three other motifs, all of which exist in single impressions only (Gercken 317, 319 & 320). They already show the broken corners and crack in the stone, which is printing very prominently in green in the present impression. One can assume that the already damaged stone eventually broke in two and became at last unusable. This does not diminish the quality and charm of the image - the uneven edges and the crack only seem to add to the spontaneity of the scene and the raw style with which it is rendered.