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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
58 quotes
“Believing in development, in a new generation of those who create and those who enjoy, we call together the youth of today. And as a youth which bears the future, we aim to create space to live and work, as opposition to the well-established, older powers. Everyone who reproduces, directly and without illusion, whatever he senses the urge to create, belongs to us.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from the group manifesto of Die Brücke, written by Kirchner in Dresden, 1906; as quoted in 'The Artists' Association 'Brücke' – Chronology', Brücke Museum. Retrieved 29 September 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
“Marcella has now become quite at home and is developing fine features. We have become quite familiar with one another.. .There exists quite a charm in such a pure female, indications that could make one crazy. More fantastic than those of the older girls. More free, without having lost the developed female. Maybe some things are more developed in her than in the more mature ones and will diminish again.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote, 1910; as quoted (and translated) in Claire Louise Albiez (incl. translation), Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, May 2…
“..art is made by man. His own figure is the center of all art.. .Therefore one must begin with the man himself.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: c. 1910; as quoted in: Der Blick auf Fränzi und Marcella: Zwei Modelle der Brücke-Künstler Heckel, Kirchner und Pechstein, Norbert Nobis; Sprengel Museum Hannover und Stiftung Moritzburg, 2011, p 17
“..momentarily, we (Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, and I) are once again at Moritzburg. There is nothing more delightful than nudes in open air.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: note, 1910; in: ' 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen' ', Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 36
“Completely strange faces pop up as interesting points through the crowd. I am carried along with the current, lacking will. To move becomes an unacceptable effort [describing the crowds in Dresden].”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote in a letter to fellow-painter Erich Heckel, from Dresden, before 1910; as quoted in 'the information added to his painting Street, Dresden' by the MOMA museum
“[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in a letter to from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
“The struggle for existence is very difficult here [Berlin! - in 1911 Kirchner and his Brücke-friends moved from Dresden to Berlin], but the possibilities are also greater. I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote in a letter to Louise Schiefler, from Berlin, 5 November 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Grosstad, Eros und Natur, aus der verborgenen Sammlungen der Region, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst Germany, 2005,…
“Life is unfixed when one lives in Berlin, where one has to fight for a living. It is painfully base here. I see that a fine, free culture cannot be created under these circumstances and wish to leave as soon as I have overcome this big slump.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: End of 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (transl. Claire Louise Albiez); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 45
“to study the nude, the foundation of all pictorial art, in total freedom and naturalness. From.. ..this basis there emerged the feeling, shared by all, of taking creative stimulus from life itself and submitting to the decisive experience.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kirchner, in 'Chronik KG Brücke', 1913; a quoted by Wolf-Dieter Dube, Der Expressionismus in Wort und Bild (Genf and Stuttgart: Skira, Klett-Cotta, 1983), p. 34; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German E…
“After lengthy struggles I now find myself here [Dr Kohnstamm's sanatorium in Königstein, in Taunus] for a time to put my mind into some kind of order. It is a terribly difficult thing, of course, to be among strangers so much of the day. But perhaps I'll be able to see and create something new. For the time being, I would like more peace and absolute seclusion. Of course, I long more and more for my work and my studio. Theories may be all very well for keeping a spiritual balance, but they are grey and shadowy compared with work and life.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter from Königstein, Taunus to Dr. Karl Hagemann, January 1916 (friend and patron in Leverkusen and collector of his art); as quoted in the biography-pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
“Every day I studied the nude, and movement in the streets and in the shops [in Berlin]. Out of the naturalistic surface with all its variations I wanted to derive the pictorially determined surface.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Botho Graef, 21 September 1916; as quoted in Voices of German Expressionism, ed. Victor H. Miesel, Tate publishing, London 2003 p. 18
“The heaviest burden of all is the presence of the war and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival.. .I am now like the whores, I once painted [in his Berlin-time]: the merest brushstroke now, gone tomorrow. Nonetheless I am still trying to put my thoughts in order and, from all the confusion, create an image of time, which is my task, after all.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in a letter from the sanatorium in Köningstein, Taunus, to Gustav Schiefler, 12 November 1916; as quoted in War, art and crisis: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1914 – 1918, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 2003, p. 28
“I painted it in Berlin [self-portrait 'The Drinker'], while screaming military convoys were passing beneath my window day and night.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter from the sanatorium in Köningstein, Taunus, to Gustav Schiefler, 12 November 1916; as quoted in Expressionism, ; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 46
“It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to dissolve myself completely into the sensations of the surroundings in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Karl Ernst Osthaus, 23 December 1917; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 36
“Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 13 October 1918; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, …
“There was such a wonderful setting of the moon this morning, the yellow moon against little pink clouds, and the mountains a pure deep blue [viewed from his Swiss farmhouse], quite glorious, I would so have liked to paint. But it was cold, even my window was frozen, although I had kept the fire in all night.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter from Frauenkirch, Jan. 1919; as quoted in Expressionism, ; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 48
“Bloated, one [=Kirchner himself] staggers off to work, where all work is in vain and the onslaught of mediocrity flattens everything. Like the cocottes that I painted, that is how one is now. Wiped out, next time gone.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Kirchner in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, March 28, 1919, in Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: Graphik, p. 49; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; publ…
“[The account of a man who sells his shadow is] in actual fact the life story of a persecution complex, that is to say, the paranoid narration of a man who through one event or another is suddenly made aware of his infinite smallness and at the same time finds the means by which to deceive the world in general, concerning this discovery.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, 27 June, 1919; as quoted by Paul Rabe, in Illustrated Books and Periodicals in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings; The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, …
“They [his 'Street Scene' paintings and drawings,he made in Berlin] originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Kirchner's Notebook entry 'Meine Strasenbilder', 24 Augustus 1919; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik, M. M. Moeller, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1990 p. 184
“There is an intellectual guardianship over the world, it is man.. .This is the last judgement, before them you stand.. .They help you when you work. You can thank them only through work. When you want to die, they sometimes appear to you. When you are completely empty and completely open, you belong to them. [after his mental recovery]”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote from 'A Painter's Credo' c. 1919; from his Davoser Tagebuch; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
“The people who live here [in and around Davos] are proud. The hard work, which is done with great love, the way they treat animals (you very seldom see an animal being mishandled) entitle them to be proud. In most cases, work here has reached the ideal standard of being done with love. You can see it in the movements of their hands. And that, in turn, ennobles the facial expression and imbues all personal contacts with a great delicacy.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, c. 1920; as cited by Kornfield, E. W.; Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992), Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
“Many thanks for your letter and the Gauguin woodcuts.. .One can see, incidentally, that Gauguin had Persian miniatures, Indian batik and Chinese art in his very blood. The shapes of the birds and the horse show that clearly. But although it looks very well, Gauguin can't stimulate us present-day artists much. We need a direct route from life to plastic form. And we get it by perpetually drawing everything we see.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), Frauenkirch, 29 November 1920; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. …
“You too, find release only in art, you are one of those privileged people who have that gift, and you will be free and at peace so long as you make use of it. Art gives us an inner superiority, for it has scope for every sensation of which human beings are capable, and first and foremost for love, which is the basis for knowledge. The artist loves without wanting to possess, and no one on earth can understand that except other artists, that is why other people think us mad.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), Frauenkirch, 29 November 1920; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. …
“All art needs this visible world and will always need it. Quite simply because, being accessible to all, it is the key to all other worlds. ** Quote from Zeichnungen von E. L. Kirchner, (under his pseudonym ) E. L. Kirchner, Genius 2, Book 2, 1921, 216-234, reprinted by National Gallery, Washington D.C. 2003, p. 226”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The technical procedures doubtless release energies in the artist that remain unused in the much more lightweight processes of drawing or painting [referring to his printmaking].”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Uber Kirchners Graphik, (under his pseudonym ) E. L. Kirchner, Genius 3, Book 2, 1922, 251-63, reprinted by National Gallery, Washington D.C. 2003, p. 226
“Nowhere does one come to know an artist better than in his prints [and] the woodcut is the most graphic of the print processes.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote of 1921; , in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Muse…
“Only the artist who has a love and an aptitude for craftsmanship should make prints; only when the artist truly prints himself does the work earn the name original print.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote of 1921; , in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Muse…
“The woodcut is the most graphic of the printmaking techniques. Its practice demands much technical ability and interest. Kirchner's technical skill made woodcutting easy for him. Thus he came in a spontaneous way through the simplification necessary here to a clear style of representation. We see in his woodcuts, which constantly accompanied his creative work, the formal language of the paintings prefigured.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (pseudonym of Kirchner) Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 252-53; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; publishe…
“After the war [1918] etching became Kirchner's favorite medium. He attributed this to its responsiveness. 'Etchings', he wrote, 'develop in the first states the most immediate hieroglyphs. Rich in lively handwriting and rich in variety of motifs, the etchings are like a diary of the painter.'”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , in Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 258; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates…
“A primitive power of artistic sensuousness speaks from the prints, which itself develops directly from the graphic technique that is tied to painstaking effort. Like the 'savage' who with patience cuts the figure.. ..out of the hard wood, so the artist creates perhaps his purest and strongest pieces.. ..following the primordial curse, if one may so understand it: from the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921):, p. 263; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, …
“..the only certainty is that he [written by Kirchner himself] creates from the forms of the visible world, however close or far from them he desires to or must come.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from 'Ein neuer Naturalismus? Eine Rundfrage des Kunstblatts', in 'Das Kunstblatt' 9, 1922; p. 375
“Our new little house [Kirchner moved to the Wildboden house] is a real joy to us. We shall live here comfortably and in great new order. This will really come to be a turning point of my life. Everything must be put in clear order and the little house furnished as simply and modestly as possible, while still being beautiful and intimate.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from his Diary, 1923; as quoted by Kornfield, E. W.; Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992). Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
“..and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature.. .We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, ; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
“I see the possibilities of a new kind of painting. With free surfaces, the goal I was always steering towards.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter, 1923; as quoted in Expressionism, ; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 52
“I see possibilities for a whole new way of painting, in which planes are used more freely. Weaving and embroidery make this possible.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I find it increasingly necessary to express my ideas first in engraving or lithography so that they may develop before I start to paint. Every year my form and expression become more sensitive, and my ideas frequently have to pass through three graphic stages before I can start on the canvas.. .I can hear you say no, that is impossible because the value of the colors demands quite different treatment from black and white, but it is the inner idea that I try to establish firmly through graphic preparation.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to , 1924, in Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: His Graphic Art, Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1961, p. 96 - note 46
“..the feeling that pervades a city presented itself in the qualities of lines of force.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from Diary entry 'Das Werk', 1925, in E. L. Kirchner Davoser Tagebuch, ed. Grisebach, p. 86
“The beautiful, architectonically constructed, severely formed bodies of these women [his girlfriend in Berlin and life companion, Erna with her sister Gerda] replaced the soft Saxon physique.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In an unpublished manuscript 'Die Arbeit E. L. Kirchners', by E. L. Kirchner 1925–1926; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 36
“I begin with movement.. .I believe that all human visual experiences are born from movement..”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An unpublished manuscript 'Die Arbeit E. L. Kirchners' by E. L. Kirchner 1925–1926; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 39
“Is such a street scene as the blue prostitutes not a picture of fantasy? Of course, only the accusation is really present. But how nice, how powerful, and how removed from nature is the design. The danger of being caught up in the representational did not exist for Kirchner [he is writing about himself, in the third person]. Instead he thought too painterly for that. The graphics and paintings of the 'Streetscenes' show best where purely painterly, one could say non-representational, feelings converged.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 47'(transl. Claire Albiez)
“It would be nice if you wouldn't call me an expressionist. I'm really not one.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Kirchner's handwritten addendum in his letter to , 20 October, 1927; from GB vol. 2, no. 411, p. 497; as cited by Peter H. Fox in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Shadow; from the digital archive Loss and Restitution:…
“Here we have been hearing terrible rumours about torture of the Jews [by the Nazis] , but it's all surely untrue. I'm a little tired and sad about the situation up there. There is a war in the air. In the museums, the hard-won cultural achievements of the last 20 years are being destroyed, and yet the reason why founded the Brücke was to encourage truly German art, made in Germany. And now it is supposed to be un-German [Degenerated Art / Entartete Kunst]. Dear God. It does upset me.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Karl Hagemann, May 1933; as quoted in the biography-pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos
“..how the movement of the passers-by [in his Street scene painting of 191-14] is comprehended in the rhombus of the heads which is twice repeated. In this way life and movement arise from an original geometric form. [Kirchner designed a diagram together with this line in the letter]”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Karl Hagemann, 27 February 1937; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 81 - note 31
“[that all differences among the former Brücke members should be put in the past and that] ..every individual conflict must be silenced and that everyone join together in the name of the whole, that is for our modern German art.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to , 1937; as quoted in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 338 (transl. (transl. Claire Albiez)
“I was born near a station. The first things that I saw in my life were the moving locomotives and trains, and I drew them as a three-year-old. Perhaps it is because of this that observations of movement are my impetus for my inspiration to create. Out of this I receive a creative experience of life, which is the source of creativity.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 17 (transl. Claire Albiez)
“[the way of life of Die Brücke artists] though strange to the ordinary man, was not meant to shock, it was a pure and simple compulsion to integrate art and life..”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Expressionism, a German Intuition, 1905-1920: [Exhibition 1980-81]; Paul Vogt, Horts Keller, Martin Urban, Wolf-Dieter Dube, and Eberhard Roters; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1980, p. 7
“[that] simple people brought their bodies and shared their scanty bread with the artists. Kirchner learned the course of life again in their houses.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: later quote of Kirchner (writing in the third person); as quoted in Claire Louise Albiez, in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florid…
“The desire that drives an artist to graphic work is perhaps partly the effort to capture the unique and indefinite nature of a drawing in a fixed and durable form. Another aspect of it is that the technical manipulations exercise energies in the artist that he does not use in the far less strenuous crafts of drawing and painting.. .the mysterious attraction that surrounded the invention of printing in the Middle Ages is still felt by anyone who takes up graphics seriously and performs every stage in the process wit hits own hands.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in Expressionism, ; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 27
“I already realized [that time] that only a new study of nature and a new attitude towards life would bring the much-needed renewal of German art.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, Anita Beloubek-Hammer, ed.; Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 26 (translation: Claire Louise Albiez)
“..he [is Kirchner, writing about himself] was especially interested in the naturally naked human being. He knowingly broke the traditional manner of the nude study and created for himself in his studio [in his Brücke-years in Berlin] a circle of young women, whom he studied in their free movement. Thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings and studies resulted from this. A beautiful, healthy, blossoming sensuality that never turns base emanates from these works.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kirchner; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (Claire Louise Albiez, translation); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 28