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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
German, 1880-1938
Portrait of Erna Kirchner, 1917
Kirshner was a German Expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of Die Brucke or "The Bridge," an early 20th-century group whose radical art is well represented in VMFA's Fischer Collection. With the onset of World War I in 1914, Kirchner, like many German Expressionists, adopted a more sober style. This portrait of his longtime companion Erna Schilling (1884-1945), whom he met a year or two before making this painting, has a subtler palette and more naturalistic forms than his prior work. Although Ernst and Erna never married, Erna obtained the right to be known by the name Kirchner after the painter's death. |