Picture "Mountain Top" (1918), framed
Picture "Mountain Top" (1918), framed
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ars mundi Exclusive Edition | limited, 980 copies | numbered | certificate | reproduction, Giclée print on canvas | on stretcher frame | framed | size 66.5 x 73.5 cm (h/w)
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Picture "Mountain Top" (1918), framed
The artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had lived in Berlin since 1915, and one of his themes was the chic big-city life, which he was able to depict with sharp contours and a sure sense of colour in all its grotesqueness. The First World War soon put an end to all this. Kirchner, who had been conscripted to military service, experienced a mental breakdown. He was then discharged from the army due to illness and moved to Switzerland in 1917 to seek recuperation and to paint again. The second major creative phase turned Kirchner into a nature painter who celebrated the Swiss mountains in bright colours and flowing forms.
Original: 1918, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 90 cm, private collection.
High-quality Fine Art Giclée edition on artist's canvas, stretched on stretcher frame. Limited edition of 980 copies, numbered, with certificate. Framed in high-quality black and silver solid wood frame. Size 66.5 x 73.5 cm (h/w). ars mundi Exclusive Edition.
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About Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
1880-1938
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was one of the founders of the artist‘s group "Die Brücke" (The Bridge) and one of the most important representatives of Expressionism. His oeuvre includes around 30,000 paintings, drawings, sketches and sculptures.
When a person's fear becomes too great and the purpose of life is not only threatened but also taken away, it is often only seen one way out: self-chosen death. This is what happened to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who took his own life by gunshot on a mountain pasture above Davos on 15 June 1938. Before that, however, he destroyed his woodblocks and a large number of his sculptures out of fear of the invasion of German troops.
Kirchner was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, on 6 May 1880 but moved to Switzerland on 13 October 1918. After several stays in sanatoriums because of severe depression and drug abuse in Germany, his friends admitted him to the doctor Ludwig Spengler in Davos.
The First World War, for which Kirchner volunteered for military service, triggered his anxiety. His "Self-Portrait as a Soldier" of 1915 was a testimony to his inner state of mind.
Kirchner was a painter who always reproduced his immediate surroundings in oil, woodcut, etching and also sculpture. Therefore, his work is structured through several phases. As a co-founder of the artist‘s group "Die Brücke" in 1905, he represented a strongly colourful and expressive style of painting, the themes of which are mainly the so-called "quarter-hour nudes" as well as city scenes of Dresden and Berlin. With the "discovery" of open-air painting, the nudes moved from the studio to the open air, in 1904 to the Moritzburg lakes, and from 1908 to Fehmarn.
After the ending of the group "Die Brücke" in 1913, Kirchner chose Berlin street scenes as a new motif, depicting the milieu of the cocottes with hard strokes and black outlines. For a long time, a critical view of the fringe groups of society took over from his paradisiacal landscape painting.
It was not until he returned to Switzerland that he found inner peace and equilibrium. His Swiss paintings of the 1920s are captivating for their colour harmonies and flowing forms.
In addition to painting and graphic art, the artist, who lived in an alpine hut, also devoted himself to sculpture. However, the National Socialists' seizure of power and the defamation of 639 of his works as "degenerate art" once again fuelled the fears of the sensitive artist and led him to his tragedy.
Graphic or sculpture edition that was initiated by ars mundi and is available only at ars mundi or at distribution partners licensed by ars mundi.
Artistic movement that replaced Impressionism in the early 20th century.
Expressionism is the German form of the art revolution in painting, graphic art and sculpture, which found its precursor in the works of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin in the late 19th century. The Expressionists attempted to advance to the primal elements of painting. With vibrant, unbroken colours in large areas and with the emphasis on the line and the resulting targeted suggestive expressiveness, they fought against the artistic taste established by the bourgeoisie.
The most important representatives of Expressionism were the founders of "Die Brücke" (The Bridge): Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller and Franz Marc, August Macke and others.
Masters of Viennese Expressionism are Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. Among the sculptors, Ernst Barlach is the most famous.
Fauvism is the French form of Expressionism.
Giclée = derived from the French verb gicler "to squirt, spurt".
The giclée method is a digital printing process. It is a high-resolution, large-format printout on an inkjet printer with special different-coloured dye- or pigment-based inks (usually six to twelve). The colours are fade-proof, i.e. resistant to harmful UV light. They have a high richness of nuance, contrast and saturation.
The giclée process is suitable for art canvases, handmade and watercolour paper as well as for silk.