?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER Liegender Mädchenkopf.
Drypoint printed in blue on smooth cream wove paper, 1917. 250x242 mm; 9 7/8x9 1/2 inches, full margins. Second state (of 2). Signed, dated and inscribed "Eigendruck" in ink, lower margin. A superb impression of this extremely scarce print.
We have found only 4 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years.
Kirchner (1880-1938) was a German Expressionist painter and printmaker. In 1905, he founded, along with Erich Heckel, Fritz Bleyl and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the group Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose establishment is recognized as the birth of Expressionism. During World War I he volunteered for the German army, but suffered a nervous breakdown in 1915 and was discharged. By 1933 he was labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis and asked to resign from his position at the Berlin Academy of Art. In 1937, more than 600 of his works were confiscated from museums and either destroyed or sold. This took a heavy psychological toll on Kirchner which led to his suicide in 1938. Dube 225.
