Curator, Starr Figura: The Brücke group was founded in 1905 by four very young architecture students in Dresden. They had studied architecture because their parents wanted them to have practical training so they could get decent paying jobs. And they ended up rejecting that, and instead decided to be artists.
The Brücke artists really felt that by overturning the academic, codified approach to art that they could actually transform society itself and so they lived a very Bohemian lifestyle, which was quite radical at the time. They decorated their studios with strange, sometimes erotic carvings and wall paintings. They and their girlfriends would often take prolonged holidays relaxing and also painting or drawing in the nude.