Flock of sheep
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| Flock of sheep |
|---|
| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , 1938 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 101 × 120 cm |
| Bridge Museum , Berlin-Dahlem |
Sheep herd is the title of a late Expressionist painting by the German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , which depicts a flock of sheep against the backdrop of his house in Frauenkirch-Wildboden and a mountain landscape. The picture was taken in 1938 and is Kirchner's last work. Today it is part of the holdings of the Brücke Museum in Berlin-Dahlem .
description
The picture is made using the technique of oil painting on canvas. It has a rectangular format of 101 × 120 cm. In the Kirchner catalog raisonné by the US art historian Donald E. Gordon it bears the number G 1024.
The lower third of the picture shows a herd of sheep with many heads in the foreground. In the background you can see the Wildboden house in front of a mountain landscape. The contours of the house are blurred, the colors do not correspond to nature, but to Kirchner's artistic concept. Overall, the picture looks gloomy, only the flock of sheep is golden yellow and attracts the viewer's gaze.
How long Kirchner worked on this picture and when he started the preparatory work for it is not known. However, it is certain that it was his last work. At the time of his suicide, according to his partner, it was standing next to him on the easel in the Wildboden house.
reception
The German internist Albert Schretzenmayr defended the thesis at a seminar congress of the German Medical Association in Davos in 1983 that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner suffered from a larvae depression that was unrecognized during his lifetime , and cited the picture “flock of sheep” as a typical example.
“His house on the Wildboden is hardly recognizable: no door, no flowers, no clear view, blind studio windows. A large flock of sheep, encircled around the house, blocks the way out, the way to freedom. Anyone who has ever come across a flock of sheep knows how to block it. "
Provenance
The picture “Flock of Sheep” comes from Kirchner's estate. It came to the Arthur Caplan Collection , Los Angeles , in the USA , and then to the Art Galleries of the University of California . Today it is part of the collection of the Brücke Museum Berlin and is one of the regularly exhibited pictures.
Exhibitions (selection)
- 2010 Städel Museum , Frankfurt am Main
- 2016 City Hall Balingen
literature
- Walter Kern: Graubünden in painting. Oprecht, Zurich 1941, OCLC 72560238
- Walter Lepori: "Magic Mountains". On Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Davos mountain pictures. Zurich 1989, OCLC 637810545 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Donald Edward Gordon: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. With a critical catalog of all paintings. Munich 1968
- ↑ Wolfgang Henze (Ed.): Catalog of the collection. Volume 1: Paintings, watercolors, pastels, drawings, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, sculptures. Kirchner Museum, Davos 1992.
- ^ Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Kirchner Museum Davos, kirchnermuseum.ch, .pdf file, p. 9, accessed on October 27, 2016.
- ^ Albert Schretzenmayr: Deutsches Ärzteblatt: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: cyclothymic personality: the life and work of the artist - from a lecture at the Davos seminar congress of the German Medical Association . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt . tape 80 , no. 29 . Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag , 1983, p. A-21 .
- ↑ Lucius Grisebach , Annette Meyer zu Eissen. With the collaboration of Ulrich Luckhardt: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 1880-1938. Nationalgalerie , Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-7913-0488-7 , p. 310 (catalog for the exhibition Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatl. Museen Preuss. Kulturbesitz, November 29, 1979– January 20, 1980)