A Dancer, ca. 1933

About the Work

Kirchner’s ‘late style’ is clearly evident in his drawings of the 1930s. The rapidly executed, rather angular expressive strokes that had distinguished the pastel Dancing Couple of 1914 have now given way to a more two-dimensional conception of form and self-contained sweeps. The artist has translated the dancer’s circular turns into parallel and intersecting curves that condense several successive individual movements. To Kirchner, line was the “symbol of motion” [1].

[1] Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, zit. n. Gerd Presler: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Die Skizzenbücher. "Ekstase des ersten Sehens". Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Karlsruhe, Davos 1996, S. 415, Skb 156.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.