Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Untitled (1906)

  • Not on view

On June 7, 1905, four students of architecture, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff founded the Brücke ("bridge") artists group in Dresden. They aspired to establish a new vision of art and culture based on the dissolution of the boundaries between art and life.

Though the idealistic search for a new experimental aesthetic inspired their collaboration, the Brücke artists also chose to make prints to promote their work in a competitive art market. They designed a variety of printed matter to assert their identity, and used them to recruit "passive members" art collectors and patrons to support, sponsor and disseminate their work.

This manifesto, the first written statement of the groups ideals, appealed to "a generation of those who create and take pleasure," and expressed the Brücke artists' desire for a "direct and genuine" approach to representation. The Jugendstil-inspired typography, including the ornamental initial and the artist's monogram "ELK," reveals Kirchner's training in the applied arts and crafts with Hugo Steiner–Prag in Munich. In the Brücke title vignette, which also shows a Jugendstil influence, a bridge is used to represent the group's aspiration to create a new community united by a shared creative consciousness and artistic imagination.

Although, the Brücke artists used a slightly earlier, typeset version of the manifesto as a kind of handbill for potential buyers, this hand–carved version with the title vignette was intended as a special gift to their "passive members" they began to recruit in 1906.

Gallery label from 2007.
Medium
Set of two woodcuts
Dimensions
compostion: see child records; sheet (each): 11 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches (28.8 x 22.2 cm)
Publisher
Künstlergruppe Brücke, Dresden
Printer
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Dresden
Edition
.1 unknown; .2 7 known impressions
Credit
Gift of J. B. Neumann
Object number
479.1941.1-2
Type
Associated Work
Department
Drawings and Prints
Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

J.B. Neumann, New York; given to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1941

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