Born July 31 in Dobeln (Saxony)
Had been attending the Gymnasium High School in Chemnitz.
Friendship with classmate Karl Schmidt-Rottluff dating from 1901. Then goes to
Dresden to study at the Technische Hochschule where he meets Kirchner and Fritz
Bleyl.
Leaves the Technische Hochschule with Kirchner and Bleyl.
Enters the drawing office of the architect Wilhelm Kreis where he worked as a
draftsman until 1907.
Cofounds Der Brucke. Heckel was the mediator and the
organizer of affairs. He found their first studio in a butcher’s and a
shoemaker’s premises. Organized their first joint exhibition in Seifert’s
lamp factory in Dresden. Represented the group as their business manager.
Meets Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde
series of woodcuts illustrating Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of
Reading Gaol. First trip to Dangast with Schmidt-Rottluff. The woodcut yields to
the lithograph. 135 of them by 1909.
Travels to Rome via Verona, Padua, Venice and Ravenna.
Spent the summer by the Moritzburg lakes and in the autumn went again to Dangast.
Italy introduced him to Etruscan art.
Friendhip with Otto Mueller. Cofounds Neue Secession in
Berlin.
Autumn: moves to Berlin and took over Mueller’s studio in
Mommsenstrasse. Summers spent in various places on the Baltic: Prerov, Hiddensee
and Fehmarn until he discovers Osterholz on the firth of Flensburg where he goes
reguarily until 1944.
Two Men at a Table is a scene from Dostoyevsky’s The
Idiot
Dissolution of der Brucke.
One man exhibition at Fritz Gurlitt’s and a joint
exhibition with Vlaminck at I.B. Neumann’s.
Volunteers for the war but unfit for active service.
Voluntary service with the Red Cross in Flanders until 1918
as a medical orderly. There he met Max Beckmann and James Ensor. The duty roster
allow for artistic activities every other day.
Returns to Berlin in November.
From frequent journeys about Europe.
729 works confiscated
Destruction of his Berlin studio. Moved to Hemmenhofen on
Lake Constance
Appointed to the Karlsruhe academy. Worked there until 1955
Died January 27 in Hemmenhofen.
SOURCES
1. The Expressionists. Wolf-Dieter Dube, trans by Mary Whittall. Thames and Hudson 1972.