Expressionism and all the other modernist art movements were represented in a large number of Berlin galleries. The Neue Secession was formed in 1910, and one year later, the Erste juryfreie Kunstaustellung (the First Juryless Art Exhibit).
A visionary with a deft feeling for the future, Herwarth Walden gathered around himself the decisive creative forces in Der Sturm, the gallery he founded in the early part of 1912. From 1910 onwards, his magazine of the same name was published ‘in order to give artists cast out by the critics and the public a place to create.’ This magazine became the ‘organ of struggle’ of the new movements like Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism and Constructivism. Among the renowned artists and writers who were published in the fourteen volumes of the magazine were Hans Arp, Gottfried Benn, Franz Marc, August Stramm, Alfred Döblin, Fernand Léger, Max Pechstein, Kurt Schwitters, August Strindberg, Tristan Tzara, Guillaume Apollinaire, Umberto Boccioni, Robert Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Filippo Marinetti and Wilhelm Worringer.
The gallery Der Sturm débuted in March 1912 with the Blaue Reiter and with Oskar Kokoschka followed by the Italian Futurists. Herwarth Walden reserved the summer exhibition for Marc, Münter, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Werefkin, who had been turned down by the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. French graphic art by Herbin, Gauguin and Picasso, as well as the Fauves and the expressive Belgians followed. In Der Sturm, Walden declared, ‘all the artists are exhibited of whom one will later say that they were the driving forces of their times’, and this was a vision that was to be confirmed. The high point of Walden’s exhibitions was to become the Este Deutsche Herbstsalon (First German Fall Salon), a counterpart to the Parisian Salon d’Automne. The Erste Deutsche Herbstalon gathered 366 works by 86 contemporary avant-garde artists from twelve countries, including among others, America, Russia and Spain. Walden, Marc, and Macke organised the Herbstalon together with financial support from the collector and patron, Bernhard Koehler. The public often reacted with indignation to the opening of the Herbstsalon. ‘Here, row upon row, the talentless are on exhibit.’ Franz Marc and the others were called, ‘a horde of paint-squirting loudmouths.’ However, there were some positive exceptions among the critics. ‘The opening day of the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon can be considered to be an historic date. There is something overpowering in seeing everywhere around one the champions and representatives of the new principles at work.’
The pulsating, almost feverish city life, the intellectual and cultural intensity, and the social contrasts had their influence upon the painting style of the Brücke artists. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, no doubt most towering artistic personality of the Brücke group, was intoxicated by life in the city, and this was reflected in the characteristically nervous eccentricity of his personal style. His depictions of people and street scenes exuded the flair of the glamourous and intense urban life. The structure of his paintings became tighter, edgier, and the forms, more dynamic. The vital energy of the present penetrated the electrically charged surface of the painting with dandies, prostitutes and pedestrians flitting eerily on their way. The futuristic technique of lining people up as if in a street scene and thereby producing the impression of continuously locomotive people fascinated Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the years 1912 to 1914. A relaxed brushstroke blurs the contours of the figures and shows movement by indicating direction. In the 1914 painting Friedrichstrasse, Berlin many growing figures are lined up as if moving behind one another, giving the impression that the people towards the back of the street are becoming younger and younger. The contours are blurred, and the figures are somewhat distorted. They seem to be transformed into a magical diagram of movement.
With the outbreak of the World War I, Kirchner volunteered as a driver for the artillery an experience which weakened his already frail physical and psychological state. In 1917, severely ill, he moved to Davos, Switzerland and finally settled down in Frauenkirch. The mountain environment and the power and majesty of nature moved him to his core. Henceforth, this became his artistic world. In spite of recurring illness and depression, he created a wide-ranging body of work and participated in many exhibitions.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street Scene (Friedrichstraße Berlin), 1914.
Oil on canvas, 125 × 91 cm. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.
After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, 639 works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were confiscated, of which 32 were shown at the 1937 Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich. In the same year, the Detroit Institute of Arts showed the first Kirchner retrospective in America. On 15 May 1938, at the age of 58, he took his own life.
Erich Heckel’s early works have a flat and clearly contoured painting style marked by a raw and aggressive manner. His particular preference was for woodcuts, and his late works are marked by a certain lyrical quality. During the ‘Third Reich,’ 729 of his works were confiscated from museums and public collections, of which thirteen were shown at the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition. An air raid in 1944 destroyed his studio in Berlin. A great number of is works, including almost all the print blocks, were destroyed. He returned to Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance in a state of resignation.
Karl Schmidt, who upon joining the artist group in 1905 called himself Schmidt-Rottluff, gave the Brücke its name. Today, his early works have become the very epitome of early Expressionism. He devoted himself to four main subjects: nudes, landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Among the Brücke members, he is, therefore, the widest ranging. In 1907 he met the art historians Rosa Schapire and Wilhelm Niemeyer, who throughout their lives worked on his behalf. He was represented at the Entartete Kunst exhibit with 25 paintings, two watercolours and 24 pages of illustrations. 608 works by Schmidt-Rottluff were confiscated from German museums in 1938. During the same year, the Nierendorf Gallery in New York showed his watercolours. Three years later, he was banned from painting. His studio was also completely destroyed in 1943 by bombing, so he moved to Rottluff near Chemnitz. In 1945 he also lost all his paintings that had been stored for safe keeping at two estates in Silesia.
Max Pechstein was the only Brücke artist to have a university education. He completed his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule Dresden (School of Applied Arts in Dresden) as a master class student, winning the Saxon state prize, the so-called Rome Prize. He joined the Brücke in 1906 and worked together with his new friends in the wild during the summer and in the studio during the winter. During a stay in Nidden in 1911, he focused on the nude. In his memoirs, he wrote: ‘So I continued my reflections upon capturing man and nature as one, more strongly and thoughtfully than at Moritzburg.’
New compositional experiments in the avant-garde art world of Berlin, such as the Orphism by Delaunay, Italian Futurism and French Cubism gradually began to come to his attention. Compositions from around 1912 to 1913 such as Still Life with Putto and Arum Lily, clearly show a withdraw from expressive colour and design they are replaced by Cubist and geometric elements that underscore the solid construction of the painting. In 1922, Max Pechstein became a member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts and just six years later he received the Prussian State Prize and became a member of the exhibition commission of the Prussian Academy of the Arts. In 1933 he was banned from working and exhibiting and was expelled from the Academy of the Arts in 1937. At the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit, the works of Max Pechstein were also shown and 326 of his works were removed from German museums. However, in 1951 he was named as an Honorary Senator of the Belin Academy of Fine Arts.
Erich Heckel, Gläserner Tag, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 138 × 114 cm. Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
Otto Mueller, Three Nudes in the Forest. Watercolour, 68 × 51.5 cm. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
Max Pechstein, Still Life with Putto and Arum Lily, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 100.5 × 77 cm. Private collection.
Otto Mueller was a master of figure composition and his subjects centred on the world of Gypsies. As he wrote in 1919 on the occasion of an exhibition of Paul Cassirer in Berlin, ‘The main goal of my efforts is with the greatest possible simplicity