Die Brücke
Encyclopedia
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum
Brücke Museum
The Brücke Museum in Berlin houses the world's largest collection of works by Die Brücke , an early 20th century expressionist movement.-Origins:...
in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl
Fritz Bleyl
Hilmar Friedrich Wilhelm Bleyl, known as Fritz Bleyl, was a German artist of the Expressionist school, and one of the four founders of artist group Die Brücke . He designed graphics for the group including, for their first show, a poster, which was banned by the police...
, Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...
, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...
and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke.-Life and work:...
. Later members were Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the 20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors...
, Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein
Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...
and Otto Mueller
Otto Mueller
Otto Mueller or Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.-Life and work:...
. The seminal group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
in the 20th century and the creation of expressionism.
Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
. Both movements shared interests in primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic. Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
. The Die Brücke artists' emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their French counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.
History
The founding members of Die Brücke in 1905 were four Jugendstil architecture students: Fritz BleylFritz Bleyl
Hilmar Friedrich Wilhelm Bleyl, known as Fritz Bleyl, was a German artist of the Expressionist school, and one of the four founders of artist group Die Brücke . He designed graphics for the group including, for their first show, a poster, which was banned by the police...
(1880–1966), Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...
(1883–1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...
(1880–1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke.-Life and work:...
(1884–1976). They met through the Königliche Technische Hochschule (technical university) of Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, where Kirchner and Bleyl began studying in 1901 and became close friends in their first term. They discussed art together and also studied nature, having a radical outlook in common. Kirchner continued studies in Munich 1903–1904, returning to Dresden in 1905 to complete his degree. The institution provided a wide range of studies in addition to architecture, such as freehand drawing, perspective drawing and the historical study of art.
Die Brücke aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the name) between the past and the present. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
, Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...
and
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
, as well as contemporary international avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movements.
As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
. The group developed a common style based on vivid color, emotional tension, violent imagery, and an influence from primitivism. After first concentrating exclusively on urban subject matter, the group ventured into southern Germany on expeditions arranged by Mueller and produced more nudes and arcadian images. They invented the printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
technique of linocut
Linocut
Linocut is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for the relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife, V-shaped chisel or gouge, with the raised areas representing a reversal of the parts to show printed...
, although they at first described them as traditional woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s, which they also made.
The group members initially "isolated" themselves in a working-class neighborhood of Dresden, aiming thereby to reject their own bourgeois backgrounds. Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...
was able to obtain an empty butcher's shop on the Berlinerstrasse in Friedrichstadt
Friedrichstadt (Dresden)
Friedrichstadt is a neighborhood in central Dresden, Germany. A factory district in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is known as the home of the founders of the artistic association known as Die Brücke.- History :...
for their use as a studio. Bleyl described the studio as:
- that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying all over the place, drawings, books and artist’s materials — much more like an artist’s romantic lodgings than the home of a well-organised architecture student.
The group composed a manifesto (mostly Kirchner's work), which was carved on wood and asserted a new generation, "who want freedom in our work and in our lives, independence from older, established forces."
In September and October 1906, the first group exhibition was held, focused on the female nude, in the showroom of K.F.M. Seifert and Co. in Dresden.
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the 20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors...
(1867–1956) and Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein
Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...
(1881–1955) joined the group in 1906. Bleyl married in 1907, and, with a concern to support his family, left the group. Otto Mueller
Otto Mueller
Otto Mueller or Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.-Life and work:...
(1874–1930) joined in 1910.
Between 1907 and 1911, Brücke members stayed during the summer at the Moritzburg
Moritzburg
Moritzburg is a municipality in the district of Meißen in Saxony, Germany, between Meißen as early centre of Saxony and the today's capital Dresden. It is most famous for its Baroque castle, Schloss Moritzburg....
lakes and on the island of Fehmarn
Fehmarn
Fehmarn is an island and - since 2003 - a town on this island in the Baltic Sea, off the eastern coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and ca. 18 kilometers south of the Danish island of Lolland...
. In 1911, Kirchner moved to Berlin, where he founded a private art school, MIUM-Institut, in collaboration with Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein
Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...
with the aim of promulgating "Moderner Unterricht im Malen" (modern teaching of painting). This was not a success and closed the following year.
In 1913, Kirchner wrote Chronik der Brücke (Brücke chronicle), which led to the ending of the group.
Legacy
A successor group formed in 1919, the Dresdner Sezession, including painter Conrad FelixmüllerConrad Felixmüller
Conrad Felixmüller was a German Expressionist painter. Born in as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his nom d'artiste....
.
Die Brücke was one of two groups of German painters fundamental to Expressionism, the other being Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and...
group ("The Blue Rider"), formed in Munich in 1911.
External links
- Brücke-Museum Website
- Die Brücke prints at MoMa
- "Hottentots in tails" A turbulent history by Christian Saehrendt