Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

German expressionist painter and sculptor, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is a key figure of the Die Brucke group, established in Dresden in 1905. The artist was one of the founders, but he also decreed its end. Their manifesto appealed to the younger generation for overcoming the old academic canons and for collaboration in making paintings and prints. He studied architecture from 1901 to 1905 at the Dresden Higher Technical School and attended Hermann Obrist's art school in Munich. In Dresden he began to take an interest in figurative art through the paintings and engravings of the German 500 and the sculptures of the African and Oceanic civilization preserved in the ethnographic museum of the city.

Throughout his career, printing, namely woodcut, lithography and etching, was as important to Kirchner as painting. In fact he is considered one of the greatest masters in this field. He also made wood carvings with rough shapes and aggressive colors that reflect his unmistakable painting style.

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