(Aschaffenburg 1880–1938 Frauenkirch near Davos)
Berghaus mit Gewitterwolke (Mountain house with storm cloud), 1917, signed and inscribed Handdruck E L Kirchner (faded), woodcut on strong vellum, image size 50 x 40 cm, sheet size 57.3 x 44.1 cm, framed

In 1915, Ernst Ludwig Kircher was drafted for military service in World War I. However, he would be declared unfit for war after a nervous and physical breakdown in the same year. In 1917, he retired to Davos, Switzerland, in a state of severe mental and physical exhaustion. Kirchner spent the summer and autumn of 1917 and 1918 on Stafelalp and in a mountain farmhouse near Frauenkirch in the vicinity of Davos.
The present woodcuts (lot 168 and lot 169) both originate from that creative phase in the Swiss Alps and represent – both figuratively and thematically – that mountain world. Fascinated by nature and the simple life of farmers and their animals, Kirchner turned away from his previous focus on the big city and its inhabitants.
In the Swiss Alps, he preferred to depict the grandeur and majesty of the mountain landscape. His works reflect his knowledge of the place, his intense observation of nature and his close study of the people living there. He dealt intensively with the landscape around him. His early paintings, made in the Swiss Alps, are mainly close-up sections of the mountain landscape, mostly without including its inhabitants. On the other hand, his later works depict the life of farmers and their animals in the landscape. Kirchner left Switzerland only occasionally for trips to Germany until his death in 1938.

Provenance:
Formerly Collection Edwin Redslob, Berlin

Exhibited and Literature:
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Im Zentrum. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – eine Hamburger Privatsammlung, 26 October 2001 – 13 January 2002 / Davos, Kirchner Museum, 27 January 2002 – 14 April 2002 / Berlin, Brücke-Museum, 17 January 2003 – 2 March 2003, cat. no. 65 (with ill.)

Literature:
Günther Gercken, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Kritisches Werkverzeichnis der Druckgraphik, Bern, 2015, vol. IV, p. 16, no. 852 I (of II), ill. p. 17
Wolf-Dieter Dube, E. L. Kirchner: das graphische Werk, München, 1991, vol. 1, p. 49, no. 299 I (II), ill. p. 48
Schiefler H 285
Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Nachzeichnungen seines Lebens, Bern 1979, p. 94