Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was the fourth founder of Die Brucke, the German expressionist painting group of renegade young architects who were not interested in figuring out the load of a building.
Instead, if you look at the images I've posted this week, the thing that comes to mind is Impressionism. No, it's not because they look impressionistic. But the dancer, the model at her curtain, these remind of Degas, especially here, In Girl at Her Toilette from 1912. The palette of bright yellow-orange, the angular black lines, the flatness, these are pure expressionist. But the intimacy and the subject matter is pure Degas.
The Most Famous--And Complicated--Die Brucke Member
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is probably the best known of the Die Brucke but he may have had the most difficult end. This painting, Female Nude by Patterned Curtain, is also from 1910 (see this week's posts). The group met chez Kirchner, and as I've written in the past, its boho setting allowed for the freeing of artistic libido.
It also alas allowed for many under age young women who hung around with the guys--all former architecture students--and served as both models and lovers. The groups manifesto allowed for this "freedom" but in retrospect of course we raise an eyebrow.
Kirchner's WWI wartime service did not sit well with him and he had a breakdown and he became addicted to drugs, drink and cigarettes. Though he continued to be productive, and much recognized and collected, he was in and out of sanitoria. Still he soldiered on and was quite prolific. As the Nazis came to power, he was part of the Degenerate Art show they organized, and his spirits increasingly waned. He shot himself in 1938.
Max Pechstein Was Once Called a Degenerate
Max Pechstein's Dance from 1910 is an example of the work of this artist who was invited to join Die Brucke by Erich Heckel and was the only one among them who actually had art training from the Royal Academy in Dresden. Also in 1910, he helped found the New Secession in Berlin after his art was rejected by the Berlin Secession exhibition. He eventually was deemed too conservative by his colleagues as his work was selling. Along with many others he left Berlin during the Nazi regime because his work was characterized as degenerate. Which of course, is the furthest thing we might think upon seeing this lyrical painting of a dancer in her arabesque penchee.