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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Quotes
1880–1938 Germany
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke (The Bridge).
Also known as: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig
Random Ernst Ludwig Kirchner quote
25 quotes
..the feeling that pervades a city presented itself in the qualities of lines of force.
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.
Nowhere does one come to know an artist better than in his prints [and] the woodcut is the most graphic of the print processes.
I begin with movement.. .I believe that all human visual experiences are born from movement..
..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.
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].
..art is made by man. His own figure is the center of all art.. .Therefore one must begin with the man himself.
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.
..momentarily, we (Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, and I) are once again at Moritzburg. There is nothing more delightful than nudes in open air.
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.
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].
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.
I see the possibilities of a new kind of painting. With free surfaces, the goal I was always steering towards.
I painted it in Berlin [self-portrait 'The Drinker'], while screaming military convoys were passing beneath my window day and night.
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.
It would be nice if you wouldn't call me an expressionist. I'm really not one.
I see possibilities for a whole new way of painting, in which planes are used more freely. Weaving and embroidery make this possible.
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.
[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.
[that] simple people brought their bodies and shared their scanty bread with the artists. Kirchner learned the course of life again in their houses.