Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

As a leading initiator of the Dresden artists' group ›Bruecke‹, founded in 1905, the expressionist painter and graphic artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff strove for a radically simplified depiction of his pictorial subjects, whereby the key to his painting was the colour composition freed from real local tones. The reduced, powerful contour and the luminous colour as an expressive medium remained the dominant features of his art and style until the old age of the artist, who died in 1976.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

curriculum vitae

1884 born in Rottluff near Chemnitz
1905/1906 Studies of architecture at the Technische Hochschule Dresden
1905 Founding of the artists' group ›Bruecke‹ in Dresden, together with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl and Erich Heckel
in November first exhibition of the group at the Kunsthalle Beyer & Sohn in Leipzig
1907 In Hamburg, he met the art critic Gustav Schiefler and the collector Rosa Schapire, who was to become his lifelong supporter
1911 Met Lyonel Feininger and Otto Müller in Berlin
1913 Summer holiday in Nidden, Curonian Spit
1914 Exhibition at the Folkwang-Museum Essen
1915-1918 as a soldier in the First World War with an armoured battalion in northern Russia and Lithuania
1919 Marriage to Emmy Frisch
1920 Exhibition at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover
1920-1931 Regular summer holidays in Jershöft (today Jarosawiec in Polish)
1923 Journey to Italy with the sculptors Georg Kolbe and Richard Scheibe
1925 Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim
1931 Member of the Preußischen Akademie der Künste Berlin
1937 Represented with 25 paintings in the National Socialist »Entartete Kunst« (Degenerate Art) exhibition
1941 Exclusion from the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste and professional ban
1943 Loss of the studio in Berlin and return to Rottluff
1946 Honorary citizenship of Chemnitz and exhibition in the Städtischen Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz
1947 Appointment as professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin (West)
1954 To celebrate his 70th birthday, exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Kiel, the Kunstverein Hamburg, Schloss Charlottenburg Berlin and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
1967 Opening of the Brücke Museum in Berlin (West)
1976 died in Berlin (West)
Gained from a wealth of observations, the pictorial organism with its rigour of composition was to reveal something of what makes nature a parable. (...) Schmidt-Rottluff strove for the power of an emotional expression that could express itself freely and uninhibitedly in the use of form and colour without giving up its connection with reality.
Horst Jähner
Künstlergruppe Brücke, Berlin: Henschelverlag 1984

further exhibitions

1910 Galerie Arnold, Dresden (participation)
1912 Galerie Commeter, Hamburg (participation)
Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin (participation)
1917 Neue Kunst Hans Goltz, München
1920 Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover
1922 Galerie Ferdinand Möller, Berlin
1927 Galerie Ernst Arnold, Dresden
1931 Galerie J. B. Neumann und Günther Franke, München
1946 Schloßbergmuseum, Chemnitz
1948 Galerie Henning, Halle/Saale
1952 Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover
1953 Galerie Ferdinand Möller, Köln
1957 Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt/Main
1959 Galerie Günther Franke, München
Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt/Main
1960 Technische Hochschule Dresden
1964 Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin/West
1969 Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
1973 Galerie Günther Franke, München
Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt/Main
1972 Galerie Lempertz Contempora, Köln
1974 Galerie Roswitha Haftmann Modern Art, Zürich
Städtische Kunstsammlung, Karl-Marx-Stadt
Nationalgalerie, Berlin/East
Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden
1985 Galerie Thomas, München
Städtische Galerie Würzburg
2011 Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg
Brücke-Museum, Berlin
2010/2011 Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrücken
2015/2016 Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz
2016 Städtische Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz
2018 Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg
2018/2019 Buchheim Museum, Bernried