Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and His Friends: Expressionism Form the Swiss Mountains

Ernst Kirchner, seminal expressionist painter and founding member of the influential artists' collective Die Brucke, came to the Swiss mountains during World War I to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his Friends is the first book to explore how Kirchner became a role model, teacher, and mentor for younger artists during his time in Davos. The momentous artistic exchange between Kirchner and his young admirers-whose ranks included the German Philipp Bauknecht, the Dutch Jan Wiegers, and the members of the Swiss Gruppe Rot-Blau-established a dialogue that had a formative influence on the direction of European art in the twentieth century. This matchless volume provides a record of the extraordinary bond that developed between a legendary-yet ailing-artist and the up-and-coming Gruppe Rot-Blaue in Switzerland. About the Author Beat Stutzer is director of the Bundner Kunstmuseum Chur (Museum of Art of the Grisons) in Chur, Switzerland, and a curator at the Segantini Museum in St. Mortiz, Switzerland. Samuel Vitali is a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, Switzerland. Han Steenbruggen is a curator of twentieth-century art at the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands. Matthias Frehner is director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland. 234 colour & 108 b/w illustrations