Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Quotes

I was born near a station. The first things that I saw in my life were the moving locomotives and trains, and I drew them as a three-year-old. Perhaps it is because of this that observations of movement are my impetus for my inspiration to create. Out of this I receive a creative experience of life, which is the source of creativity.

I painted it in Berlin [self-portrait 'The Drinker'], while screaming military convoys were passing beneath my window day and night.

Every day I studied the nude, and movement in the streets and in the shops [in Berlin]. Out of the naturalistic surface with all its variations I wanted to derive the pictorially determined surface.

[that all differences among the former Brücke members should be put in the past and that] ..every individual conflict must be silenced and that everyone join together in the name of the whole, that is for our modern German art.

You too, find release only in art, you are one of those privileged people who have that gift, and you will be free and at peace so long as you make use of it. Art gives us an inner superiority, for it has scope for every sensation of which human beings are capable, and first and foremost for love, which is the basis for knowledge. The artist loves without wanting to possess, and no one on earth can understand that except other artists, that is why other people think us mad.

..art is made by man. His own figure is the center of all art.. .Therefore one must begin with the man himself.

Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.

The heaviest burden of all is the presence of the war and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival.. .I am now like the whores, I once painted [in his Berlin-time]: the merest brushstroke now, gone tomorrow. Nonetheless I am still trying to put my thoughts in order and, from all the confusion, create an image of time, which is my task, after all.

Now I'm sitting quietly at home again and I'm happy to be able to work undisturbed. I made a lot of sketches of life in Germany and it was very intriguing to see life there [in Berlin, a stay for three weeks]. I was also glad to see the old pictures of Rembrandt, Dürer, etc. again and to have the confirmation and encouragement they gave me. As for the moderns, I saw damned little that gripped me.. .Modern German painting has moved so far away from me and become unintelligible in areas in which my work had, and still has, an influence; but people like Klee, Kandinsky, etc. have moved much closer to me again, in fact I value the Bauhaus more and more. These people are working and developing. You can see that there is development. And they love their work, which is the main thing.

I see the possibilities of a new kind of painting. With free surfaces, the goal I was always steering towards.

c. 1910; as quoted in: Der Blick auf Fränzi und Marcella: Zwei Modelle der Brücke-Künstler Heckel, Kirchner und Pechstein, Norbert Nobis; Sprengel Museum Hannover und Stiftung Moritzburg, 2011, p 17

I see possibilities for a whole new way of painting, in which planes are used more freely. Weaving and embroidery make this possible.

I am very happy and thankful to be 'here' [Switzerland] and to remain. Here I can at least work a little on my good days, and be at peace among these simple, kindly people. In this solitude I have fought my way through to the possibility of continuing to live, even suffering so much. My time for circuses, 'cocottes' and company is over [referring to his wild 'Brücke'-years in Berlin]. I made what I could out of it, and I do not think it had been done in that way before. Otherwise there is nothing to link me with those 'événements'. During my 7 years in Berlin I let the whole essence of that kind of thing seep into me so thoroughly that I now know it back to front, and can leave it. Now I have other tasks, and they lie here.. .I cannot go down again into the throng. I am more than ever afraid of crowds. But more still, my work here is only at the beginning of its possibilities.

Here we have been hearing terrible rumours about torture of the Jews [by the Nazis] , but it's all surely untrue. I'm a little tired and sad about the situation up there. There is a war in the air. In the museums, the hard-won cultural achievements of the last 20 years are being destroyed, and yet the reason why founded the Brücke was to encourage truly German art, made in Germany. And now it is supposed to be un-German [Degenerated Art / Entartete Kunst]. Dear God. It does upset me.

In: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 17 (transl. Claire Albiez)