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.
You may have heard about Japonisme – the influence Japanese art had on Western art in the 19th century, after Japanese ports reopened in 1854, having been closed to the West for over 200 years. I posted about 8 Great Artists Inspired by Japanese Art a while back. Artists like Van Gogh, Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec …
How Diebenkorn Abstracts the Figure Watch the diagonals: how they form shapes, intersect with each other, form pathways across and divide the canvas. See how he crops in close, balancing the positive and negative shapes to be equal in weight, colliding the diagonals with the edge of the canvas or paper, so the edge also …
I was interested in learning how to better see and describe what makes Charity Baker’s drawings and paintings so captivating, and she gave me a list of her teachers from the New York Studio School. Goldmine! I posted drawings by her teacher Barbara Grossman yesterday. Today I found drawings by Stanley Lewis. Although the two …
The Seattle Artist League has moved all adult and teen classes in painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking ONLINE. We are dedicated to keeping our artistic community active, connected, and safe. Previous to this week, I haven’t done a lot of video conferencing. I don’t Skype or Facetime more than once every two years, and I cultivate a …
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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Japonisme, Parisme
You may have heard about Japonisme – the influence Japanese art had on Western art in the 19th century, after Japanese ports reopened in 1854, having been closed to the West for over 200 years. I posted about 8 Great Artists Inspired by Japanese Art a while back. Artists like Van Gogh, Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec …
Diebenkorn’s Figures
How Diebenkorn Abstracts the Figure Watch the diagonals: how they form shapes, intersect with each other, form pathways across and divide the canvas. See how he crops in close, balancing the positive and negative shapes to be equal in weight, colliding the diagonals with the edge of the canvas or paper, so the edge also …
Drawings by Stanley Lewis
I was interested in learning how to better see and describe what makes Charity Baker’s drawings and paintings so captivating, and she gave me a list of her teachers from the New York Studio School. Goldmine! I posted drawings by her teacher Barbara Grossman yesterday. Today I found drawings by Stanley Lewis. Although the two …
I was surprised by the online classes
The Seattle Artist League has moved all adult and teen classes in painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking ONLINE. We are dedicated to keeping our artistic community active, connected, and safe. Previous to this week, I haven’t done a lot of video conferencing. I don’t Skype or Facetime more than once every two years, and I cultivate a …