Radierung / Kaltnadel & Schmirgel , 33,1 x 39,5 cm
Lithografie / Pinsellithografie , 44,3 x 56,3 cm
Cliché / Zinkätzung , 22,1 x 17,3 cm
Holzschnitt , 28,1 x 19,8 cm
Holzschnitt , 11,1 x 8,5 cm
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.
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.
Künstlergruppe Brücke, Berlin: Henschelverlag 1984
