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Moonrise: Soldier and Maiden, 1905, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
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Moonrise: Soldier and Maiden, 1905, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Enormously attractive, exuberant laugh, hypersensitive, obsessed with work.
The poet Heym very important to Kirchner. He painted portraits of the poets Sternheim and Alfred Doblin around the time of WWI. Also: architect Van de Velde, Frankfurt art dealer Schames, psychologist Binswanger and archaeologist Botho Graf.
Born 6 May in Aschaffenburg.
Resident in Chemnitz.
Studies architecture at the Technische Hochschule in
Dresden.
Friendship with Fritz Bleyl
Two semesters at the art school of Wilhelm von Debschitz and
Hermann Obrist
in Munich where he got to know Jugendstil. Impressed by the
Phalanx exhibition. Not so much by the Munich Secession.
Return to Dresden, friendship with Erich Heckel.
Took his final examinations and qualified as an engineer at
the Technische Hochschule. Took up painting full time. Friendship with Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff.
Cofounds the Brucke group.
Meets Nolde and Pechstein.
Summer on the island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea. First
time at the sea. Went back most summers in the coming years.
Cofounds Neue Secession in Berlin. Friendship with Otto
Mueller who taught him the use of distemper. Also tried mixing petrol into his
oil paints to apply them thinly and achieve a quick dry and a matt finish.
Visits Bohemia with Mueller.
Moves to Berlin.
Breakup of the Brucke
Military service 1914-1915. Released after physical and
mental breakdown.
In Konigstein im Taunus in hopes of a cure.
His friends get him to move to Davos, Switzerland Remained
in Frauenkirch near Davos after his recovery.
639 works confiscated as ‘degenerate’.
Commits suicide June 15 in Frauenkirch.
SOURCES
The Expressionists. Wolf-Dieter Dube, trans by Mary Whittall. Thames and Hudson, 1972.