Lovers in the Morning, 1915

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) rendered the two lovers in an unconventional and explicit depiction, showing them in the early, still dim morning light in a tender embrace. The woman’s bright body stands out from the hazy darkness. Both the man and the woman’s face show mask-like traits. Kirchner molded the lithograph using soft, atmospherically compacted strokes. Yet, the tangle of lines appears somewhat jagged and nervous, as if underneath the dreamy-delicate mood there was another, hidden layer, one of disquiet. This is a distinctive hallmark of the oeuvre of Kirchner, a co-founder of the Dresden artists’ association Die Brücke, who with his creative solutions expressed a new attitude towards life opposed to bourgeois conventions. As a representative of German Expressionism, the painter and graphic artist was defamed as a “degenerate artist” after 1933 by the National Socialist regime. In 1938, he committed suicide in exile in Switzerland.

MH, 2023