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ONLINECOLLECTION

Carl Sternheim, 1916

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Lithograph on paper
35×27.9 cm

Artists

  • Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

    (Aschaffenburg 1880‒1938 Davos Frauenkirch )

Unfortunately not on display at the moment
The furrowed face of an intellectual with a domed forehead, slanted cat eyes, a moustache and a rounded chin, resting on his hand angled in a rather affected manner, provides a psychogram of the German dramatist, novelist and poet Carl Sternheim (1878–1942). Hailing from a bourgeois family, he caused scandals with his caustic-ironic plays, in which he satirized the rigid bourgeois morality of the Wilhelmine era. The nervous-blurry strokes, with which Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) carved out the physiognomy of the writer from the dark background, appear as if Kirchner attempted to sound out the nature of a soulmate and to capture the vibrant atmosphere of this time which both of them –Sternheim as a writer and Kirchner as a painter and graphic artist – actively shaped as co-founders of German Expressionism.

Object data

Artist/author
  • Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Title
Carl Sternheim
Date
1916
Art movement
Expressionism
Category
Graphic work
Material​/technique
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions
35×27.9 cm
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna - Donation Helmut Klewan
Inventory access
Accession 2021
Selection of Reference works
  • Der Blick aus dem Rahmen. Literarische Porträts aus der Sammlung Klewan, hrsg. von Hans-Peter Wipplinger/ Stefan Kutzenberger, Köln 2022 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien 06.05.2022-29.08.2022).
Catalogue raisonne
  • Dube 1967: L. 328
Keywords

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i

Helmut Klewan, Wien (o.D.)
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (seit 2022); (1)

  1. Archiv des Leopold Museums, Schenkungsvertrag vom 19.01.2022

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