Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Straße mit roter Kokotte - Street with red streetwalker
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Aschaffenburg 1880 - Frauenkirch-Wildboden 1938
Straße mit roter Kokotte - Street with red streetwalker (ca. 1915 - 25)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
According to the inscription on the reverse, Strasse mit roter Kokotte was painted in Berlin in 1914. The central part of the composition is dominated by the figure of the whore dressed strikingly in red, turned into a symbol that is both bourgeois and anti-bourgeois. Standing at a street corner, she attracts the attention of several male passers-by depicted in the same scene. A postcard Kirchner sent Heckel on 4 April 1910 displays a very similar composition: a woman strolling by dressed in red, with a prominent diagonal that marks the passage of several male passers-by and an outlined figure in the foreground. This shows that while in Berlin Kirchner developed a number of artistic ideas that he had already touched on in his previous period.
The composition displays a geometric arrangement that structures the entire picture surface in an ordered manner and is painted in the angular, deformed style characteristic of the artist’s Berlin period, with an unstable space constructed by prominent diagonals that recall Munch and the formal schematisation of Cubism. The isolation of the figures, which, as Dube points out, is due to the fact that the artist wishes to convey “the hectic and unnatural condition of the modern metropolis, ” is combined with an Expressionist spontaneity taken to an unprecedented intensity. According to the inscription on the reverse, Strasse mit roter Kokotte was painted in Berlin in 1914. The central part of the composition is dominated by the figure of the whore dressed strikingly in red, turned into a symbol that is both bourgeois and anti-bourgeois. Standing at a street corner, she attracts the attention of several male passers-by depicted in the same scene. A postcard Kirchner sent Heckel on 4 April 1910 displays a very similar composition: a woman strolling by dressed in red, with a prominent diagonal that marks the passage of several male passers-by and an outlined figure in the foreground. This shows that while in Berlin Kirchner developed a number of artistic ideas that he had already touched on in his previous period.
Source and more Information:
www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/kirchner-ernst...
The composition displays a geometric arrangement that structures the entire picture surface in an ordered manner and is painted in the angular, deformed style characteristic of the artist’s Berlin period, with an unstable space constructed by prominent diagonals that recall Munch and the formal schematisation of Cubism. The isolation of the figures, which, as Dube points out, is due to the fact that the artist wishes to convey “the hectic and unnatural condition of the modern metropolis, ” is combined with an Expressionist spontaneity taken to an unprecedented intensity.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Straße mit roter Kokotte - Street with red streetwalker
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Aschaffenburg 1880 - Frauenkirch-Wildboden 1938
Straße mit roter Kokotte - Street with red streetwalker (ca. 1915 - 25)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
According to the inscription on the reverse, Strasse mit roter Kokotte was painted in Berlin in 1914. The central part of the composition is dominated by the figure of the whore dressed strikingly in red, turned into a symbol that is both bourgeois and anti-bourgeois. Standing at a street corner, she attracts the attention of several male passers-by depicted in the same scene. A postcard Kirchner sent Heckel on 4 April 1910 displays a very similar composition: a woman strolling by dressed in red, with a prominent diagonal that marks the passage of several male passers-by and an outlined figure in the foreground. This shows that while in Berlin Kirchner developed a number of artistic ideas that he had already touched on in his previous period.
The composition displays a geometric arrangement that structures the entire picture surface in an ordered manner and is painted in the angular, deformed style characteristic of the artist’s Berlin period, with an unstable space constructed by prominent diagonals that recall Munch and the formal schematisation of Cubism. The isolation of the figures, which, as Dube points out, is due to the fact that the artist wishes to convey “the hectic and unnatural condition of the modern metropolis, ” is combined with an Expressionist spontaneity taken to an unprecedented intensity. According to the inscription on the reverse, Strasse mit roter Kokotte was painted in Berlin in 1914. The central part of the composition is dominated by the figure of the whore dressed strikingly in red, turned into a symbol that is both bourgeois and anti-bourgeois. Standing at a street corner, she attracts the attention of several male passers-by depicted in the same scene. A postcard Kirchner sent Heckel on 4 April 1910 displays a very similar composition: a woman strolling by dressed in red, with a prominent diagonal that marks the passage of several male passers-by and an outlined figure in the foreground. This shows that while in Berlin Kirchner developed a number of artistic ideas that he had already touched on in his previous period.
Source and more Information:
www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/kirchner-ernst...
The composition displays a geometric arrangement that structures the entire picture surface in an ordered manner and is painted in the angular, deformed style characteristic of the artist’s Berlin period, with an unstable space constructed by prominent diagonals that recall Munch and the formal schematisation of Cubism. The isolation of the figures, which, as Dube points out, is due to the fact that the artist wishes to convey “the hectic and unnatural condition of the modern metropolis, ” is combined with an Expressionist spontaneity taken to an unprecedented intensity.