Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, more than any other German painter of his generation, embodied the figure of the expressionist artist. The severe, not to say dramatic image that he left us of himself must not, however, lead to the fact that he was an artist of great talents, with a high regard for his work and for the role of absolute protagonist he played in the renewal. of twentieth century painting. Throughout his life he has been concerned with giving an ethical meaning to his business, with placing art at the service of an idea.
The great exhibition set up at the Kunsthaus in Zurich intends to retrace Kirchner's adventure by focusing on the period of most intense activity when he left Dresden in 1912 and moved to Berlin where he will stay for a few years reaching the apex of his artistic production. A research that develops on a double, opposite track. On the one hand, the hustle and bustle of the big metropolis, on the other hand the slow passing of time and the serenity of country life appreciated in stays on Fehmarn, a remote Baltic island where the artist spent the summer months.
The confrontation with the city and with the problems connected to an exasperated development are the privileged contents of Kirchner's research whose paintings appear as the result of both the fascination and the rejection of life in the German capital. He is confronted with the paradoxes of everyday life and with the problems connected to unbridled progress, the uncontrolled growth of a nation's industry, which faces the abyss of a world conflict, in which marginalization and loneliness reign.
Kirchner does not, however, focus on the easiest issues and avoids dwelling on social tensions, widespread poverty, the world of work and housing shortages. The urban context becomes fertile ground for the artist's investigation, whose works reveal a “metropolitan sensibility” characterized by an aggressive approach, a deep emphasis and a sense of constant dynamism.
The artist's interest focuses on outdoor models, the variety environment, the encounters in cafes and, in an alienating urban space, he gives life to his extraordinary "street scenes", animated by elegant emblems of a Berlin unscrupulous, disenchanted and bewitching.
This attention to the alienating aspects of the modern city is evident in Friedrichstrasse Berlin of 1914, one of the most representative paintings of those years and of the entire expressionist movement. The scene is dominated by a group of female figures dressed in black and blue, with a plumed hat, veil and high-heeled shoes, with long dresses that barely hint at the femininity of the forms. Stretched vertically as if by a distorting lens, all the lines of the painting are rigid, angular and sharp. The facial features of the women in the foreground, the plume of black feathers adorning the hats: the unreality of the whole is heightened by the acid and anti-naturalistic colors of the yellowish faces and the green road.
Paintings like this one or like La Rue, together with others present in the exhibition among the over 160 works on display from the major European and American museums presented alongside paintings found in prestigious private collections and rarely exhibited, reveal in Kirchner a deep-rooted restlessness, a widespread malaise, such as to induce him, to act as a counterpoint to this disenchanted analysis of a society torn apart by conflicts and of man in contrast with the environment, to take refuge in an uncontaminated place on the island of Fehmarn, eager to immerse himself in an uncontaminated environment. In this oasis of seaside life he creates works of great freshness, idyllic landscapes and nude figures on the beach engaged in games and dances, characterized by an unprecedented spontaneity of inspiration, by a fluency of execution implemented through decisive and material brushstrokes that recall the Fauvist lesson arriving at a strongly contrasted chromatism.
By proposing the comparison between these two “souls” of the great German artist, the exhibition reveals the complexity of Kirchner's personality, the heterogeneity of his approach to reality, the discontinuity of his moods, typical of every fruitful creative spirit. At the same time, however, it is a prelude to the artist's growing mental instability and the progressive worsening of his health conditions that will lead him to withdraw more and more in himself and to leave Germany a few years later to retire to the quiet of Davos.
The favorite subjects become the pastures and shepherds, the fir woods and the mountains, the few friends who go up to find him to let themselves go to the memories ... It is Kirchner's extreme attempt to get closer to nature to capture its vital forces but above all to find refuge in a bucolic setting, leaving the anxieties and worries aroused by the upheavals and crimes of war downstream or outside the chalet.
Unfortunately, the anguish of memory and the awareness of a society destined inexorably to collapse are too heavy a burden to bear for Kirchner who on June 15, 1938 kills himself by shooting himself in the heart.
