Portrait of Dr. Carl Hagemann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Portrait of Dr. Carl Hagemann
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Portrait of Dr. Carl Hagemann, 1928 – 1933


Dimensions
121 x 90 cm
Physical Description
Oil on canvas
Inventory Number
2058
Acquisition
Acquired in 1955 as a gift from Fritz Hagemann; formerly Carl Hagemann Collection
Status
On display, 1st upper level, Modern Art, room 12

Texts

About the Work

Carl Hagemann was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s most important patron and collector. In 1928, he visited the artist in Davos and sat for him on one of his self-carved chairs. Kirchner worked on this painting for several years. He finally finished it in 1932 and then gave it to Hagemann as a token of friendship. The work vividly shows that, in the early 1920s, Kirchner turned away from the emotional expressiveness of his Brücke years: he emphasised the lines, applied the colours as large cohesive sections and reproduced spatial structures two-dimensionally. Accordingly, he merged the doorway on the left with both a shelf and the carpet in the foreground to form a sort of mosaic. He described this change in his creative expression as his “new style”.

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.

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Last update

10.10.2024