Archers
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| Archers |
|---|
| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , 1935/1937 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 195 x 130 cm |
| Kirchner Museum Davos , Davos |
Archers is a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from 1935, which was made in Davos , Switzerland . It is one of the painter's late works which art history no longer classifies as expressionism . The picture shows three people who are engaged in archery . Today the painting is part of the collection of the Kirchner Museum in Davos.
background
The painting in portrait format has the dimensions 195 cm × 130 cm and is executed in the painting technique oil on canvas . On the back it bears the name EL Kirchner . In Donald E. Gordon's catalog raisonné for Kirchner's oil paintings, it bears the number 994 .
The archery motif has long been used in depictions of Saint Sebastian . It cannot be ruled out that Kirchner alludes to this in his painting. An undated letter to Erich Heckel from around the end of June 1910 contains a drawing with this motif. Two archers point their arrows at a figure tied to a tree. Thorsten Sadowsky, director of the Kirchner Museum Davos and curator, asks in his book whether the artist saw himself as a martyr and states that in this drawing Kirchner's two girls are aiming at Saint Sebastian. A drawing of a crucifixion group or a Calvary also appears in the same letter . Sebastian, who was later crucified, is mocked by several naked women in Kirchner's work. Kirchner could have seen himself in the role of man as a passive sexual object . Between 1919 and 1923, Kirchner took a photo of a peasant girl with a bow and arrow, viewed from below, so that it appears larger.
description
The painting shows three people who are engaged in the sport of archery. The female figure in the foreground holds arrows in her hand, the figure on the left the drawn bow. The middle figure is shown in a tense posture. What they all have in common is the focused gaze directed at the target. The step position forms a pronounced diagonal from the bottom left to the target at the top right, which thus forms the vanishing point of perspective.
Kirchner's late style, created around 1924, is characterized by a conscious departure from German expressionism. Increasing abstraction , but also naturalistic echoes at the same time , can be seen especially in the target and determine the composition of this picture. The figures are no longer depicted in three dimensions, as they were in his Expressionist phase, but rather flat. They also show the shaded areas that were characteristic of his late period, painted in shades of brown, some of which are described as a kind of aura of the people or as “air shadows”. These superimposed color fields form independent, two-dimensional compositional elements within the picture. American art historian Donald E. Gordon mentioned that the color of Kirchner's late work of Paul Gauguin remember .
On November 28, 1935, Kirchner wrote to his patron and collector Carl Hagemann that his letter to Kirchner was “open again. Now everyone can see our corespondence. ”And further:“ Now I am painting a large picture for archers . The large dark areas, the air shadows are not even noticed in the picture by the observer [sic!]. You are a new discovery of mine and make the picture calm and monumental. You can still find a lot of things that have never been used in painting. ”In another letter to Hagemann of November 2, 1937, he mentions the exhibition in the Basler Kunsthalle in 1937, the quarreling of the curators there, and that the picture archers there will be shown in a different hanging of his work than before.
Exhibitions (selection)
The picture has been shown at numerous exhibitions, including
- 1937 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Institut of Art, Detroit and in the same year Kunsthalle Basel
- 1979/1980 on the occasion of his 100th birthday: Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; House of Art, Munich and Museum Ludwig in the Kunsthalle Cologne.
- June 30 to November 17, 2013 Kirchner's archers - art historical reflections.
- November 8, 2014 to March 8, 2015 archery. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner a. a. Biberach Museum
- In 2016 it was part of the exhibition Alles Kirchner! The museum as a chamber of curiosities and Rupprecht Matthies feat. Kirchner in the Kirchner Museum Davos.
literature
- Thorsten Sadowsky: Kirchner's archers. Art historical reflections. Kirchner Museum Davos 2013, ISBN 978-3-9524175-0-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Annemarie Dube-Heynig: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Postcards and letters to Erich Heckel in the Altona Museum in Hamburg. DuMont, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7701-1628-3 , pp. 150 and 257.
- ↑ Thorsten Sadowsky: Kirchner's archers. Art historical reflections. Kirchner Museum Davos 2013, ISBN 978-3-9524175-0-8 , p. 15.
- ↑ Hans Dieter Erbsmehl: We pounced on nature in the girls. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the children's models of the artist group Brücke. In: Georges Bloch Yearbook of the Art History Institute of the University of Zurich. Volume 9/10, 2004, p. 113 ff. And p. 133 f.
- ↑ Hyun Ae Lee: 'But I'm going to set up a new Kirchner again': Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Davos late work. With a detailed time table for the Swiss years 1917 to 1938 . Waxmann Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8309-7056-9 , p. 139.
- ^ Exhibition catalog of the Berlin National Gallery: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Berlin 1979, p. 308.
- ^ Donald Edward Gordon: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. With a critical catalog of all paintings. Munich 1968, p. 152.
- ^ Hans Delfs, Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, Roland Scotti (eds.): Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde, Ney… Letters to the collector and patron Carl Hagemann 1906–1940. Hatje Canz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1477-4 , pp. 506 and 694.
- ^ Karlheinz Gabler: Dedicated to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner on the occasion of his 100th birthday on May 6, 1980 . Brücke-Museum, Berlin 1979, OCLC 248440583 .
- ↑ Kirchner's Archers - Reflections on Art History. on kultur-online.net.
- ^ Archery in Art. on suedkurier.de.