WELCOME TO MARK VALLEN'S "ART FOR A CHANGE" WEBSITE

BACK TO EXPRESSIONISTS

Self-Portrait
as a Soldier
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Oil on Canvas 1915

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was greatly influenced by the French neo-Impressionists led by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1904 he met the artist Karl Schmidt Rottluff, the architecture students Erich Heckel and Frintz Bleyl, and together they started Die Brücke ("The Bridge"), one of the early expressionists circles.

In 1915 Kirchner served in the army as a driver in an artillery regiment, but soon suffered a total physical and mental collapse that sent him into a sanitarium.
In 1937 the Nazis banned his art, designating him an entarteten Künstler ("degenerate artist"). They seized 639 artworks by the artist from museum collections, and in 1937 displayed 32 of his works in the infamous exhibit, Entartete Kunst ("Degenerate Art"). Meant to mock and belittle modern art as the work of "Jews", "Communists", and the mentally insane, the Nazi exhibit signaled the end of art in Germany for a time. In 1938, Kirchner committed suicide.
www.art-for-a-change.com is owned and operated by Mark Vallen © All text by Mark Vallen.