In art school, our art history course included a section on German Expressionism, featuring some paintings by Ludwig Kirchner. They looked something like this:
Ludwig Kirchner, “Street, Berlin” (1913)
I remember not liking them at the time. Expressionism? Everyone’s squeezed in like bristling sardines! The darkness behind the colors, the acidic contrasts, the dampening black, and the sharp downward angles all felt overwhelming to me. After the mention in the books, I never looked him up on my own, and I groaned every time his name came up.
Not a Bonnard – it’s by Kirchner!
Today, though, I was searching for some happy landscape paintings. I’d recently revisited Bonnard’s work, whose colors always delight me, but I wanted to discover something new. That’s when I stumbled across these colorful landscapes by Kirchner—paintings I’d never seen before. Lots and lots of them! They surprised me. Some of the lines and spaces remind me of Cézanne, Van Gogh, or even Mondrian during his late tree phase. The colors feel closer to the French Fauvists—bold, bright, and slightly clashing, but undeniably eye candy.
Kirchner’s earlier works, with their sharp angles and jarring contrasts, described the fractured, anxious world he experienced in early 1900s Germany.
Kirchner’s Self-Portrait as a Soldier” (1915)
Most of his landscapes, however, came later, after his breakdown during World War I. He moved to Davos, Switzerland, in 1917, and in those works, it seems he found something lighter, maybe happiness.
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Unexpected Happiness in Landscapes by Kirchner
In art school, our art history course included a section on German Expressionism, featuring some paintings by Ludwig Kirchner. They looked something like this:
Ludwig Kirchner, “Street, Berlin” (1913)
I remember not liking them at the time. Expressionism? Everyone’s squeezed in like bristling sardines! The darkness behind the colors, the acidic contrasts, the dampening black, and the sharp downward angles all felt overwhelming to me. After the mention in the books, I never looked him up on my own, and I groaned every time his name came up.
Today, though, I was searching for some happy landscape paintings. I’d recently revisited Bonnard’s work, whose colors always delight me, but I wanted to discover something new. That’s when I stumbled across these colorful landscapes by Kirchner—paintings I’d never seen before. Lots and lots of them! They surprised me. Some of the lines and spaces remind me of Cézanne, Van Gogh, or even Mondrian during his late tree phase. The colors feel closer to the French Fauvists—bold, bright, and slightly clashing, but undeniably eye candy.
Kirchner’s earlier works, with their sharp angles and jarring contrasts, described the fractured, anxious world he experienced in early 1900s Germany.
Kirchner’s Self-Portrait as a Soldier” (1915)
Most of his landscapes, however, came later, after his breakdown during World War I. He moved to Davos, Switzerland, in 1917, and in those works, it seems he found something lighter, maybe happiness.
Unexpected Happiness in Landscapes by Kirchner
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