Kirchner – Women Seated at a Table, Profile to the Left

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 Aschaffenburg – 1938 Frauenkirch)

WOMEN SEATED AT A TABLE, PROFILE TO THE LEFT (TWO WOMEN AT THE TABLE)

Executed around 1908
Pen and ink on paper, 21 x 17.5 cm

Provenance:
Galerie Theo Hill, Cologne;
Galerie Aenne Abels, Cologne;
Gunda Horbach, Düsseldorf (early 1960s)

This work is documented in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive in Wichtrach/Bern. Archive extract dated 25 October 2024

At first glance, it is surprising that an artist whose work owes so much of its impact to colour devoted himself so passionately to black-and-white drawing, but Kirchner needed it to clarify his image structure and composition and to get to the essence of the representation. On his tours through the streets, cafés, bars and cabarets, he noted down his visual impressions in the form of spontaneous, quick sketches. These did not always result in a painting, but they did produce many masterful drawings that can stand alone as individual works.

In 1905, he founded the artists’ group ‘Die Brücke’ in Dresden with his artist friends Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. In 1908, his career slowly began to take off. He developed his own distinctive drawing style: ‘Am Tisch Sitzende, mit Profil nach links’ (Person sitting at a table, profile to the left) is a close-up view, the motif limited to a few elements that fill the page to the edges. The drawing is devoid of space and plasticity of internal forms and largely free of detail. Separated by strong contours, positive and negative forms face each other in balanced tension. Despite its small format, it appears large in its abbreviation and restriction to the essentials. All of this corresponds to Kirchner’s drawing style of the years 1908–1910. The drawings from his Dresden years lack the sharp, hard and fragmented style of his Berlin city scenes. The forms are rounder, softer and still reveal the beauty of Art Nouveau. He was also inspired by the works of Edward Munch, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, the Neo-Impressionists and Fauvists, which Kirchner saw at exhibitions in Munich, Berlin and Dresden from 1904 onwards.

The works from Kirchner’s Dresden Bridge period reveal the gradual emergence of Expressionism. ‘People Seated at a Table, in Profile to the Left’, which reflects an important step in the artist’s development with its direct and expressive style, is a masterpiece of modern art. Measuring just 21 x 17.5 cm, it combines everything that makes Kirchner’s work so outstanding.