Two Figures

Description

One of the founding members of The Bridge, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner first studied painting and architecture in Dresden in 1901. He abandoned his formal schooling three years later to found with fellow architecture students an association that would allow them freedom to experiment with art and bohemian lifestyles. The Bridge, as it came to be known, was officially founded in 1905 and Kirchner proved a central, organizing figure for the group, authoring its manifesto, chronicle, and other programmatic statements.
Especially interested in the representation of the human figure, Kirchner produced numerous studies of bathers during The Bridge’s sojourns at the Moritzburg Lakes outside of Dresden. Kirchner intended to depict figures unfettered by convention living in harmony with nature and developed his spontaneous style to express the immediacy and unadorned honesty toward life that the artists valued. After Kirchner left Dresden for Berlin in 1911, he continued his studies of bathers on the island of Fehmarn on the Baltic Sean where he produced this drawing.
Text written by Katharine A. Weiss, Exhibitions Assistant, on the occasion of the UMMA exhibition Graphic Visions: German Expressionist Prints and Drawings, January 25–April 6, 2003, West Gallery