Karl Schmidt-Rottluff: creativity and style features

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884 - 1976) - German artist, engraver and sculptor, classic of modernism, one of the most important representatives of expressionism. During a short period of study at the University of Dresden, the aspiring artist and other like-minded people organized the progressive creative group "Bridge". During the period of Nazi rule, Schmidt's works, like those of other avant-garde artists, were among those banned, and his work was featured in the Degenerate Art exhibition. Karl Schmidt was a prolific master, his creative heritage, in addition to numerous paintings, is represented by 300 woodcuts and 70 engravings on other materials, 105 lithographs, 78 commercial prints.

Creating a Bridge group

In 1905, Schmitt entered the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Dresden. There, Erich Haeckel, with whom Schmitt had been friends since 1901, introduced him to budding artists Ernst Kirchner, Erich Haeckel and Fritz Blail. Alltogether they passionately shared similar creative interests, studying architecture as the basis of the visual arts. Young people founded the group "Bridge" (Die Brücke) in Dresden on June 7, 1905 with the aim of creating a new uncompromising style that runs counter to creative traditions. The association's first exhibition opened in Leipzig in November of the same year.

From 1905 to 1911, during the group's stay in Dresden, all the members of the "Most" followed a similar path of development, being strongly influenced by Art Nouveau and Neo-Impressionism. In December 1911, Schmidt and part of the group moved from Dresden to Berlin. The group disbanded in 1913, mainly due to changes in the artistic directions of each individual member. The six-year stay in the Die Brücke association influenced the further position of Karl Schmidt in relation to art and the formation of his individual style.

Creativity in the period of the “Bridge” association

In 1906, Schmidt added to his name the creative pseudonym Rotluff - the name of his native city. In the subjects of his paintings, most often there are North German and Scandinavian landscapes. Initially, the style of Schmidt-Rottluff's work was still clearly influenced by impressionism, but his works stood out among the works of his Die Brücke colleagues by violating the laws of composition and simplified forms with exaggerated flatness. At first, in his expressive works, he used the pure tones of the main color scheme, which achieved a special transfer of the environment and coloristic intensity. Approximately atIn 1909, the artist became interested in woodcuts and played an important role in the revival of this ancient woodcut technique.

Prone to solitude, Schmidt spent the summer months from 1907 to 1912 near the coast of the B altic Sea, in Dangast, near Bremen, where he found many motives for his landscape paintings. In 1910, some of his most controversial landscape works were created there, which later gained recognition and fame. Moving to Berlin in 1911, the artist turned to the simplification of form, developing a geometrically formal look for the image. Gradually, he began to use more muted tones, focusing on the form, outlined in dark contrasting outline and reminiscent of draftsmanship. His creative experiences were interrupted by the start of the war.

Military and post-war activities

From 1912 to 1920, Schmidt continued to work with woodcuts, the style of which took on a much more angular outline, and experiment with carved wood sculptures. Serving in the First World War on the Eastern Front, Karl Schmidt created a series of engravings on a religious theme, with the help of which he tried to come to terms with the horrors of war. In the future, these works were regarded as a graphic masterpiece of the artist. At the end of the war, he became a member of the Arbeitsrat fr Kunst in Berlin, an anti-academic socialist movement of artists from the period of the German Revolution of 1918-1919.

In 1918, Schmidt returned from the front to Berlin, and during the 1920s his working rhythm was restored: in the summer the artisttraveled and painted in nature, and in the winter he worked in the studio. A stay in the south of the B altic Sea in Pomerania, on Lake Lebe, in the Swiss Taunus mountains, as well as in Rome to study at Villa Massimo (1930) is reflected in his mature still lifes and landscapes.

The angular, contrasting style of Schmidt-Rottluff became more colorful and blurry in the early 1920s, and by the middle of the decade it began to develop into images of flat forms with smooth outlines. Geometric shapes and round, curved shapes began to take up more space in his work from 1923 onwards.

The artist regularly participated in exhibitions of progressive art. When, after the war, expressionism in Germany was accepted by the general public, Schmidt's works received recognition, and their author received awards and honors. In 1931, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, from which he was forced to leave two years later. In 1932 he moved to Rumbke near Lake Lebskoe in Pomerania.

Degenerate Art Artist

As a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund association of German artists since 1927 (since 1928 on the executive committee, then a member of the jury), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff took part in the last annual exhibition of the DKB in 1936. Two of his oil paintings were presented: "Snowy Stream" and "Evening by the Stream" In 1937, 608 of Schmidt's works were confiscated by the Nazis from German museums as examples of "degenerate art", some of them were shownat the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. On March 20, 1939, many of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's paintings were burned in the courtyard of the Berlin fire department. The artist was deprived of all his awards and positions, in 1941 he was expelled from the professional association and was banned from painting.

In September 1942, Karl Schmidt was visiting Count von Moltke at Kreisau Castle in Lower Silesia. There, despite the ban, he painted numerous landscapes, especially views of the park, fields, Mount Zobten. Only a few of these watercolors, given to friends, have survived, the rest were destroyed in 1945. Schmidt retired to Chemnitz, where he stayed from 1943 to 1946. His Berlin apartment and studio were bombed and most of his work was destroyed.

Post World War II

The reputation of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was gradually rehabilitated after the war. In 1947 he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where he had a great influence on the new generation of German art masters. Since 1950 he has been reinstated in the German Association of Artists, from which he participated five times in annual exhibitions between 1951 and 1976.

In 1964, he created a fund of works that served as the basis for the Bridge Museum in West Berlin. The Die Brcke Museum, which houses the works of the members of the group, was opened in 1967.

In 1956, Schmidt, considered an innovator and revolutionary infield of German fine arts, was awarded the highest award of West Germany - the Order of Merit Pour le Mrite, and his works were classified as classic. In the GDR, the work of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, like that of other Expressionists, was caught in the maelstrom of the debate about formalism, defined by the ideology of socialist realism of the late 1940s. His paintings were hardly bought in the GDR, and there were very few exhibitions before 1982.

Since the death of Karl Schmidt, numerous retrospectives in the Federal Republic have paid tribute to the memory of this artist, unanimously considered by art historians to be one of the most important German expressionists.