Five women on the street

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Five women on the street (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner)
Five women on the street
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , 1913
Oil on canvas
120 × 90 cm
Museum Ludwig , Cologne

Five women on the street is the title of the first painting from the cycle street scenes by the expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner . This cycle includes works from the years before the First World War up to 1915. This picture was taken in 1913 in Berlin, where Kirchner had lived since 1911. The picture shows five courtesans, like the Berlin prostitutes were then called, in the city at night on Free wait. In 1937 the National Socialists confiscated the work as part of their defamation campaign “ Degenerate Art ”. Today the painting belongs to the inventory of the Cologne Museum Ludwig .

description

The picture is made using the technique of oil painting on canvas. It is 120 × 90 cm in portrait format. In the directory of Kirchner's works by Donald E. Gordon , it bears the number G 362.

You can see five smartly dressed women, prostitutes, ready to make contact with suitors. In this picture, Kirchner depicts a characteristic type of person who populates large nocturnal cities in groups, as here, in Berlin immediately before the war, in autumn 1913. On the left edge of the picture, a car is indicated in the form of a wheel, a symbol of modern times. The woman standing on the left is looking at it. All the other women look away to the right in the direction of a lighted shop window. This typical big city scene on a sidewalk appears often with Kirchner. The group of figures is the focus of these street scenes. The figures shown have elongated body proportions, angular contours of the faces and thus an absolute slimness. The women's clothing consists of dark, tight coats or capes, some with fur collars and other applications, as well as high-heeled shoes, extravagant hats and feather-adorned caps. Her pose is demonstrative disinterest, but with furtive looks. Its immobile, statuary-like appearance, but with lively eyes, creates the specifically erotic tension of the scenery. An artificial yellowish green, especially cold color scheme is typical of Kirchner's Berlin street scenes. Against this backdrop, the women appear like shrill purple birds. The surrounding urban architecture is only indicated in the background of the picture. In Berlin, Kirchner orientated himself on the French Cubists represented in exhibitions there and the Italian Futurists , which made it easier for him to express himself in his perception of the city as a decadent metropolis. His impulsive, nervous brushstroke in zigzag lines and hatching underscores this view and conveys “a feeling of anonymity and hectic pace, as Kirchner experiences in the capital. With the depiction of women in their shrill exaltation, the painter also symbolizes the decadence of late Wilhelmine society, shortly before the looming catastrophe of the First World War ”.

According to art historian Hyang-Sook Kim, this first Berlin street scene is the beginning of a change in Kirchner's portrayal of women. While his wives in Dresden until 1911 were consistently sensual and sexualized, they are now disfigured, demonized, predatory and portrayed as a negative projection onto Kirchner's relationship with women. Perhaps his illusion about women, which he created from the male perspective, was destroyed shortly before the foreseeable catastrophe of a war in view of the conditions on Berlin's streets and led to his aversion to their self-confident, haughty demeanor, which is shown in sharp, angular brushstrokes after the Hyang-Sook Kim's opinion is a clear sign of his perceived disturbance in the relationship between the sexes. He painted street whores for the first time in Berlin, not prostitutes in brothels who passively wait for customers, but active women who are self-confident and challengingly looking for their suitors. The painterly depiction of the figures appears larger than life and indicates a dominance. Viewed in an iconographic context, it could be concluded that Kirchner saw women in a prominent position in society of his time.

In 1914 Kirchner made a woodcut of this motif entitled Five Cocottes , which shows the same scene, but reversed and with different faces.

Provenance

The painting was bought by Kirchner from the Folkwang Museum in Essen in 1926 and remained in the museum's holdings until July 6, 1937, when it was confiscated by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and was now in the possession of the German Reich. After presentations in the Degenerate Art exhibition at various locations in Germany, it was transferred to the depot for internationally usable works of art in Berlin's Schönhausen Palace in August 1938 , where it remained until March 7, 1940. Then it was supposed to be sold abroad by the art dealer Ferdinand Möller ; However, it remained in Germany and ended up in the collection of Baron Le Tanneaux von Saint Paul in Seeshaupt . In 1947 it came to the Günther Franke gallery in Munich , from which the lawyer and art collector Josef Haubrich acquired it for the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, now the Museum Ludwig .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Hyang-Sook Kim: The depictions of women in the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: the painter's hidden self-confessions. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-8288-8407-5 . Zugl .: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 2001 ( books.google.de ).
  • Deborah Wye: Kirchner and the Berlin Street. Museum of Modern Art, DAP, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-87070-741-4 . (Exhibition catalog).

DVD / video

  • Evelyn Weiss , Frank Günther Zehnder: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Museum Ludwig Cologne. Stefan Lochner: The Mother of God in the Rosenlaube ca.1450, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Five women on the street 1913, Edvard Munch: Four girls on the bridge 1905, Andy Warhol: Texaner, portrait, Robert Rauschenberg 1963, Wolf Vostell: Miss America ( = DuMont creative; video; hundred masterpieces. 4). DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-7701-2052-3 .
  • 1000 masterpieces - German Expressionism: Kirchner, Nolde, Heckel, Marc, Münter. Lingua-Video.com Medien GmbH, 2008, ISBN 978-3-939873-80-8 . [Five masterpieces of German Expressionism: 1) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Five women on the street (1913); 2) Emil Nolde: Saint Maria Aegyptiaca (1912); 3) Max Beckmann: actor triptych (1941–42); 4) Franz Marc: The Tiger (1912); 5) Gabriele Münter: Dorfstrasse in Winter (1911).]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Magdalena M. Moeller : High point of expressionism: Kirchner's Berlin style of the years 1911–1914 , in: Magdalena M. Moeller (ed.): Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints; an exhibition on the 60th anniversary ... . Hirmer, Munich 1998, pp. 25–34, here: p. 30
  2. ↑ a b Database confiscation inventory "Degenerate Art" (search mask must be filled out)
  3. ↑ Lucius Grisebach, Annette Meyer zu Eissen, Ulrich Luckhardt: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1810–1938. Exhibition catalog Nationalgalerie Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-7913-0488-7 , 187 f.
  4. ^ Gerhard Kolberg: Description of the picture
  5. ^ Website Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Five women on the street, 1913, oil on canvas, 120 × 90 cm, Haubrich Collection 1947 on decourtenay.blogspot.de
  6. ↑ Hyang-Sook Kim: The depictions of women in the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: hidden self-confessions of the painter. Dissertation, Marburg 2002, p. 120 ff.
  7. ↑ Lucius Grisebach, Annette Meyer zu Eissen, Ulrich Luckhardt: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1810–1938 . Exhibition catalog Nationalgalerie Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-7913-0488-7 , p. 187.
  8. ↑ Splendor and Glory. In: tagesspiegel.de. Retrieved May 12, 2016 .
  9. ^ New building of the Folkwang Museum: Count Baudissin is cleaning up. In: Zeit Online. March 18, 2010, accessed May 12, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Kirchner and the Berlin Street (PDF, p. 4) on moma.org
  11. ↑ "The most beautiful museum in the world" in Folkwang Essen. wa.de, March 24, 2010, accessed May 12, 2016 .